UNIVEKSr«'^^^  .-t  i;  MJFOR^Ji^' 


liBRARY 


-•« 


THE    POPULAK   BALLAD 


BY 


FRANCIS   B.   GUMMERE 

PROFESSOR  OF  ENGLISH   IN   HAVERFORD  COLLEGE. 

AUTHOR  OF  "  THE  BEGINNINGS   OF  POETRY," 

"  HANDBOOK  OF  POETICS,"  ETC.,  ETC. 


BOSTON   AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN   AND   COMPANY 

(SLhe  iRibcrjsibe  pte0,  Cambribfle 

1907 


2  1-^/6 


COPYRIGHT  1907  BY  FRANCIS  B.  GUMMERE 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  May  iqofj 


*      •  *  •     • 

«   •      *  * 


♦        •        ■»      »     .     • 


(  Cl»  •Vol 


TO 

A.  M.  G. 


.EL_  Lib 


rary 


c  \ 

CONTENTS 

Prefatory  Note  by  the  General  Editor  ...  ix 

Preface xv 

Chapter  I.  The  Ballad  :  Definition  and  Origins. 

I.  the  meaning  of  "popular." —  Minstrels  and  jour- 
nalists —  Definition  by  origins 1-16 

II.  COMMUNAL  authorship.  —  Poetry  of  the  People  and 
Poetry  of  Art  —  The  history  of  poetry  conceived  as  a 
pyramid  —  Primitive  chorals 16-28 

III.  COMMUNAL    poetry   OTHER    THAN    BALLADS.  — 

The  question  restated  —  The  broken  bridge  —  Early 
Germanic  chronicle,  lyric,  epic — Improvisation — Records 
of  communal  song  —  Proof  of  origin  so  far  incomplete    .  28-61 

IV.  specific  marks  of  THE   BALLAD.  —  No   primitive 

ballads  preserved  —  Effect  of  oral  tradition  —  Imperson- 
ality —  The  narrative  test 61-71 

V.   THE   BALLAD  STRUCTURE.  —  Structure  the  essential 
.  /  fact  —  Other  tests  —  Improvisation  —  Refrain  —  Situa- 
tion to  narrative  —  Dialogue 71-85 

VI.    CHORAL  AND    EPIC    ELEMENTS.  —  The    split    situa- 
tion —  Repetition  —  Ritual  and  myth  —  Origins  in  the 
^■'  dance  —  The  epic  process  —  The  situation  ballad       .      .         85-1 1 7 

VII.   INCREMENTAL   REPETITION   AS    FINAL    PROOF   OF 
POPULAR  ORIGIN.  —  Situation  and  repetition  —  The 
'relative-climax  —  Incremental    repetition    the    original 
pattern  of  balladry 117-134 

Chapter  II.    The  Ballads:  Classification. 

I.  the  oldest  GROUPS.  —  Riddle  ballads  —  Flytings  — 
Domestic  complications  —  Stolen  brides  —  Ballads  of  the 
dance  —  Elopements 135-166 


viii  CONTENTS 

II.  BA^tLADS  OF  KINSHIP.  —  Bewick  and  Graham  — The, 
i&trther-in-law  —  The  filial  relation  —  Jealousy  —  Adul- 
tery—  fidelity — The  tragic  conflict — The  Braes  of 
Yarrow  —  Betrayal  —  Child  Waters 166-207 

III.  THE  CORONACH  AND  BALLADS  OF  THE  SUPER- 

NATURAL. —  Coronachs  —  Good-nights  —  Jonah  bal- 
lads —  Fairy  ballads  —  Preternatural  ballads  —  Trans- 
formation —  Ghosts 207-223 

IV.  LEGENDARY   BALLADS.  —  Classical  and  sacred  tradi- 

tion —  The  Bitter  Withy  —  Minstrel  ballads  and  ribaldry 

—  Humor  —  Ballads  of  the  sea  —  Mary  Hamilton    .      .       223-243 

V.  THE  BORDER  BALI^DS.  —  Singing  and  saying —  Border 
raids  —  Ballads  of  battle  —  Otterbum  and  Cheviot  — 
Chronicle  ballads 243-266 

VI.   THE     GREENWOOD     BALLADS.  —  Outlaws  —  Robin 

Hood,  his  ballads  and  his  epic 266-285 

Chapter  III.    The  Sources  of  the  Ballads. 

Tradition  —  The  problem  of  sources  —  Transmission  and 
distribution  —  Coincidence  or  derivation  to  explain  com- 
mon traits?  —  Folklore  in  the  ballads  —  Stock  phrases  — 
Conventional  elements  —  Fusion  of  ballads  —  Texts  — 
Collectors  —  Editors  —  Forgers  —  Imitators  —  Original 
element 286-321 

Chapter  IV.    The  Worth  of  the  Ballads. 

,  ,  Cumulative  appeal  as  opposed  to  individual  suggestion  — 
Taine's  formula  —  Convention  in  balladry  —  Metre  and 
diction  —  Figurative  power  —  Nature  —  The  objective 
note  in  balladry  —  Contrast  with  art  —  The  characters  of 
the  ballad  —  Its  final  value  —  Tragedy  to  the  fore  —  The 
voice  of  the  people 322-345 

Bibliographical  Notes 346 

Ballads  cited  or  quoted 35i 

Index 355 


PREFATORY   NOTE 

/  ^  20,3 

BY   THE   GENERAL    EDITOR 

The  extent  of  English  Literature  is  now  so  vast  that  a 
comprehensive  and  scholarly  treatment  of  it  as  a  whole 
has  almost  ceased  to  be  regarded  as  a  task  within  the 
scope  of  a  single  writer.  Collaboration  has,  accordingly, 
been  resorted  to  more  and  more;  and  the  method  of 
collaboration  hitherto  employed  has  been  to  assign  to 
each  of  a  group  of  scholars  a  chronological  period.  This 
is,  of  course,  a  natural  and  useful  principle  of  division. 
It  brings  out  clearly  the  relation  of  the  spirit  of  contem- 
porary life  to  the  literature  of  a  period ;  and  the  consid- 
erations it  involves  will  always  be  of  prime  importance. 
But  it  has  certain  serious  defects.  The  separation  of 
periods  tends  to  exaggerate  the  differences  between  them, 
and  to  obscure  the  essential  continuity  of  literary  history. 
The  Middle  Ages,  for  example,  are  frequently  treated 
as  a  static  period,  and  the  Renaissance  is  described  as  if 
the  tendencies  which  characterized  it  began  abruptly. 
The  gradual  nature  of  the  transition  is  ignored,  as  is  the 
fact  that  the  roots  of  much  that  is  regarded  as  exclusively 


X  PREFATORY   NOTE 

of  the  Renaissance  are  to  be  found  in  the  intellectual  life 
of  Europe  for  centuries  before.  Further,  the  persistence 
and  development  of  literary  forms  and  modes  of  thought 
cannot  be  justly  exhibited  in  a  scheme  which  of  necessity 
interrupts  them  at  what  are  often  arbitrary  points. 

The  purpose  of  the  series  of  which  the  present  is  the 
initial  volume  is  to  attempt  the  division  of  the  field  along 
vertical  instead  of  horizontal  lines.  It  is  proposed  to 
devote  each  volume  to  the  consideration  of  the  charac- 
teristics of  a  single  formal  type,  to  describe  its  origins 
and  the  foreign  influences  that  have  affected  it,  and  to 
estimate  the  literary  value  and  historical  importance  of 
all  the  chief  specimens  that  have  been  produced  in  Eng- 
land and  America.  Biographical  detail,  except  when  it 
has  a  bearing  upon  the  modification  of  the  type,  will  be 
omitted,  as  sufficiently  dealt  with  in  the  current  manuals; 
but  bibliographies  of  the  earliest  and  of  the  best  accessible 
editions  of  the  works  concerned  will  be  given,  as  well  as 
of  the  more  valuable  criticism.  It  is  designed  to  include 
all  the  important  literary  species,  so  that  the  series  as  a 
whole  will  constitute  a  fairly  comprehensive  survey  of 
the  contents  of  our  literature. 

The  advantages  to  be  gained  by  this  method  of  ap- 
proach are  obvious.  It  will  be  possible  —  for  the  first  time, 
save  in  the  case  of  one  or  two  popular  forms  —  to  view 


PREFATORY   NOTE  xi 

the  history  of  the  growth,  variations,  and  intermixtures 
of  the  genres  of  Enghsh  Literature,  disentangled  from 
the  mass  of  biographical  and  other  detail  which  at  present 
obscures  the  course  of  their  development,  and  even  their 
essential  nature.  It  will  bring  into  view  forms  which  have 
an  unmistakable  identity,  and  which  have  had  at  times 
a  remarkable  vogue,  but  which  have  suffered  partial 
eclipse  from  the  accident  of  not  having  been  employed 
by  any  writer  of  the  first  magnitude.  It  will  reveal  an 
unexpected  flourishing  of  other  forms  in  periods  when 
they  have  been  supposed  to  have  practically  disappeared. 
Thus  the  Picaresque  is  generally  regarded  as  having 
culminated  in  the  eighteenth  century  in  writers  such  as 
Defoe  and  Smollett,  while  on  more  minute  investigation 
it  is  found  to  be  extremely  active  at  the  present  moment, 
and  to  have  recently  produced  at  least  one  interesting 
new  variety.  Finally,  one  may  fairly  hope  that  the  tak- 
ing account  of  our  literature  along  these  lines  will  be 
an  important  step  towards  preparing  material  for  that 
comparative  study  from  which  is  to  be  expected  the 
next  great  advance  in  our  understanding  of  literary 
phenomena.  The  comparative  method  will  indeed  be 
employed  in  these  volumes  in  the  discussion  of  origins 
and  influences;  but  beyond  this  one  may  discern  a  pos- 
sibility for  large   and   fruitful  generalizations,  when  a 


xii  PREFATORY   NOTE 

similar  ordering  of  the  material  shall  have  been  made 
in  the  other  European  literatures. 

The  difficulties  of  the  undertaking  need  not  be  ignored. 
The  defining  of  the  type  and  the  setting  of  it  apart  from 
its  nearer  relatives,  the  contamination  of  types,  the  dis- 
solving of  the  definable  form  into  a  mere  pervasive 
mood,  the  necessity  of  discussing  a  work  from  one  point 
of  view  at  a  time,  leaving  others  to  be  dealt  with  in  later 
volumes,  —  these  and  many  similar  problems  will  call  for 
much  exercise  of  judgment  on  the  part  of  the  individual 
authors.  But  it  will  often  be  in  the  working  out  of  just 
such  problems  that  most  illumination  will  be  cast  upon 
aspects  and  relations  hitherto  ignored.  The  compre- 
hensive treatment  of  some  great  works  which  have  been 
the  culminating  points  of  previous  histories  is  not  here 
to  be  expected.  Thus  "  The  Faerie  Queene  "  must  be 
viewed  as  a  link  in  the  history,  at  one  time,  of  Allegory, 
at  another,  of  Romance,  at  another,  of  Didactic  Poetry. 
But  the  sacrifice  of  one  kind  of  unity  and  comprehen- 
siveness thus  entailed  will  be  compensated  for  by  the 
light  thrown  from  new  angles;  and  it  is  a  sacrifice  of 
something  already  frequently  attempted. 

The  division  of  the  whole  body  of  a  literature  into  con- 
stituent genres  presents  greater  difficulties  in  the  case  of 
English  than  in  the  case,  say,  of  French.   English  writers 


PREFATORY   NOTE  xiii 

have  been  less  accustomed  than  French  to  view  their 
work  as  belonging  to  specific  types,  have  been,  on  the 
whole,  less  conscious  of  form  as  such,  more  concerned 
with  a  subject-matter  or  a  message.  But  to  admit  this 
is  not  to  deny  that  the  forms  have  been  there,  and 
have  reacted  powerfully,  if  silently,  upon  content.  The 
extent  to  which  this  is  true  can  be  determined  better 
at  the  close  of  our  labors  than  at  the  beginning. 

So  also  must  we  postpone  till  the  work  is  nearer  com- 
pletion the  much  debated  question  of  the  evolution  of 
genres,  and  the  validity  in  this  discussion  of  the  biological 
analogy.  No  attempt  in  the  present  direction  has  yet  been 
made  on  a  scale  sufficiently  large  to  justify  dogmatism 
as  to  the  presence  or  absence  of  a  clearly  definable  curve 
of  evolution  in  the  life-history  of  literary  forms  in  English. 
A  number  of  terms  that  seem  to  imply  a  belief  in  such  a 
formal  evolution  have  passed  into  the  language  of  current 
criticism,  and  will  doubtless  appear  in  these  studies.  But 
the  opponents  of  this  theory  may  regard  such  terms  as 
merely  convenient  figures  of  speech,  not  committing  the 
writer  to  a  prejudgment  of  the  case  for  the  debating  of 
which  he  is  at  present  only  collecting  evidence.  What 
cannot  be  denied  is  the  usefulness  of  segregating  for 
purposes  of  special  study  the  examples  of  the  various 
literary  types,  and  of  the  attempt  to  gather  from  these 
their    essential    characteristics,    the    modifications    they 


xiv  PREFATORY   NOTE 

undergo  from  age  to  age  and  author  to  author,  the 
nature  and  degree  of  the  excellence  of  each  in  its  kind, 
and  their  importance  in  the  history  of  literature  re- 
garded both  as  a  form  of  beauty  and  as  a  revelation 
of  the  human  spirit.  And  this  is  the  main  purpose  of 
these  volumes. 


PREFACE 

Gentle  readers  are  advised  to  begin  their  reading  of 
this  book  with  the  second  chapter.  The  first  chapter  is 
for  those  who  would  quicken  their  faith  in  the  ballad  as 
an  independent  type  of  literature,  as  well  as  for  those 
who  wish  to  have  all  the  conceded  facts  before  their  eyes. 
It  must  not  be  regarded,  however,  as  a  chapter  of  con- 
troversy, as  canine,  —  if  one  may  borrow  the  notion 
of  an  old  English  don  who  is  quaintly  said  to  have  had 
"no  tolerance  for  dogs,  doubting  their  powers  of  self- 
restraint." 

It  is  a  pleasure  to  acknowledge  the  constant  and  help- 
ful interest  of  Professor  W.  A.  Neilson,  the  general  editor 
of  this  series;  to  recall  the  encouragement,  unfailing 
and  unwearied  for  fifteen  years,  of  Professor  G.  L.  Kit- 
tredge;  and  to  remember  that  these  men,  like  the  present 
writer  though  to  so  much  better  purpose,  once  learned 
the  lore  of  ballads  from  Francis  James  Child. 

F.  B.  G. 

Haverfohd,  March,  1907. 


igW^Wi 


THE   POPULAR  BALLAD 

CHAPTER  I 
THE   BALLAD 

I.    THE    MEANING    OF    "  POPULAR " 

N  January  of  1678  Fontenelle  sent  to  the 
Mercure  his  "  Description  of  the  Empire  of 
Poetry."  A  great  country,  he  calls  it,  and, 
for  the  main  part,  densely  peopled.  "Like 
most  of  our  provinces,  it  is  divided  into  Upper  and 
Lower  Poetry;"  of  the  former.  Epic  is  "the  chief  city" 
and  Tragedy  a  lofty  mountain  range,  while  in  the  other 
district,  the  low  countries,  which  are  full  of  marsh,  Bur- 
lesque is  the  capital  town.  Comedy,  to  be  sure,  "has  a 
far  more  agreeable  site;  but  it  is  uncomfortably  near  Bur- 
lesque." Between  Upper  and  Lower  Poetry  are  "vast 
solitudes,"  the  region  of  good  sense,  little  inhabited, 
though  boasting  an  admirable  soil.  Two  rivers  water 
this  vast  empire;  one  is  the  river  of  Reason,  and  the 
other  is  called  Rime,  rising  at  the  foot  of  the  Mountains 
of  Dream  {reverie).  There  is  an  obscure  Forest  of  Fus- 
tian; and  far  to  the  north  are  towns  like  Acrostic  and 
Anagram.  Well  out  in  the  sea  are  an  Isle  of  Satire, 
and  an  Archipelago  of  Bagatelles  containing  number- 
less little  islands,  —  "des  madrigaux,  des  chansons,  des 


2  THE    BALLAD 

impromptu."  And  that  is  all.  One  searches  Fontenelle's 
empire  of  poetry  in  vain  for  anything  that  could  answer 
to  the  title  and  the  purpose  of  this  present  book,  for  any 
glimpse, of  what  one  now  calls  the  popular  ballad. 

True,  the  popular  ballad,  or  rather  popular  song,  had 
been  discovered  and  named,  a  century  before  Fontenelle's 
day,  by  one  of  his  own  countrymen.  Montaigne  had 
opened  critical  eyes  to  the  fact  that  poetry  might  exist 
independent  of  books  and  of  written  records,  had  com- 
pared savage  verse  with  the  songs  of  French  peasants, 
and  had  praised  for  the  first  time  what  he  was  first  to  call 
"poetry  of  the  people."  But  it  is  not  on  Fontenelle's  map, 
the  new  world  of  poetry;  and  even  in  this  day  there  are 
critics  who  see  no  necessity  for  assigning  to  popular  bal- 
lads a  specific  and  clearly  bounded  portion  of  the  poetic 
globe.  If  one  says,  as  one  does  say,  that  the  popular 
ballad  is  a  poem  meant  for  singing,  quite  impersonal 
in  manner,  narrative  in  material,  probably  connected  in 
its  origins  with  the  communal  dance,  but  submitted  to 
a  process  of  oral  tradition  among  people  who  are  free 
from  literary  influences  and  fairly  homogeneous  in  char- 
acter, one  cannot  be  sure  of  general  assent.  There  is  no 
subject  on  which  men  ofi^er  theories  with  such  confi-' 
dence  as  on  questions  about  the  origins  and  beginnings 
of  poetry;  and  the  origins  of  the  ballad  have  been  de- 
bated almost  beyond  belief.  Every  one  of  the  statements 
just  made  might  meet  a  challenge;  and  the  challenge 
cannot  be  ignored.  The  statements  must  all  be  proved, 
or  at  least  made  reasonable,  by  facts.    The  facts,  again. 


DEFINITION  OF  "POPULAR"  3 

must  be  rightly  applied;  and  one  is  reminded  of  Rous- 
seau's pious  wish  that  two  men,  one  very  rich  and  one 
very  wise,  should  together  go  round  the  world  and  study 
the  human  race.  Just  such  a  partnership  of  information 
and  inference  ought  to  be  formed  in  a  field  of  research 
where  the  capital  and  complementary  faults  have  pre- 
vailed of  collecting  material  without  formulating  a  theory 
of  what  the  ballad  is,  and  of  formulating  theories  about 
the  ballad  without  intelligent  use  of  the  material.  Diffi- 
culties begin  with  the  mere  nomenclature  of  the  subject. 
It  is  not  only  what  are  popular  ballads ;  but  what  is  a  "  bal- 
lad," and  what  is  "popular"?  Popular  is  something 
which  pertains  to  the  people  at  large,  and  ballad  is  a  song 
to  which  folk  used  to  dance;  yet  nearly  every  variety  of 
short  poem  in  English  has  been  called  a  ballad,  from  the 
translated  songs  of  Solomon,  "  the  Ballad  of  Ballads," 
through  stirring  lays  in  love  or  adventure  and  cheery 
lyrics  of  emotion,  down  to  those  feats  in  journalistic 
verse  which  filled  the  times  of  great  Elizabeth  with  tales 
of  a  "monsterous  pygge"  or  forecast  of  an  earthquake.^ 
Here,  indeed,  the  danger  of  definition  begins;  for  they 
were  "popular"  enough,  these  ballads  in  print,  as 
Shakespeare  bears  witness,  pouring  sufficient  satire  on  the 
news  "but  a  month  old"  which  they  scattered  abroad. 
His  usurer's  wife  and  his  lyrical  fish  ^  need  not  bring 

^  The  shepherd  "lighteth  no  sooner  on  a  quagmire,  but  he  thinketh 
this  is  the  foretold  earthquake  whereof  his  boy  hath  the  Ballett."  — 
Nashe,  Anatomy  of  Absurdity,  ed.  Grosart,  i,  33. 

^  Winter's  Tale,  iv,  iii. 


4  THE    BALLAD 

confusion  into  the  case;  but  there  were  also  printed 
ballads  about  great  men  and  great  events,  which,  along 
with  the  pedler  or  minstrel  who  sang  them,  and  that 
forerunner  of  the  Grub-Street  brotherhood  who  made 
them,  must  be  disentangled  from  popular  ballads  of  the 
traditional  and  unsophisticated  kind,  Tom  Nashe 
would  have  "the  acts  of  the  ventrous  and  the  praise  of 
the  vertuous  ...  by  publique  edict  prohibited  by  such 
men's  mouths  to  be  so  odiouslie  extolde,"  and  rails 
again  and  again  at  these  "ragged  rimes  shuffled  or 
slubberd  up"  by  some  "stitcher,  weaver,  spendthrift  or 
w  fidler."  Such  ballads  in  print  began  to  appear  in  England 
about  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century,^  and  by  its 
concluding  decades  were  sold  in  thousands;  they  are  not 
quite  the  same  quality  as  those  popular  songs  made  in 
Paris  and  sung  through  the  streets  in  the  days  of  Mme. 
de  Sevigne,^  which  were  called  vers  du  Pont-Neuf  or 
ponts-neufs  outright.  Ponts-neufs,  although  in  the  jour- 
nalistic manner,  have  a  more  communal  note,  and  were 
sung  by  crowds,  rather  than  read  by  the  'prentice  or  shep- 
herd's boy.     Still,  the  line  is  not  easy  to  draw;  with  the 

*  The  oldest  printed  ballad  of  this  sort  now  known  in  English  is  said 
to  be  Skelton's  Ballade  of  the  Scottish  Kynge,  in  black  letter  of  about 
1513;  although  the  Gest  of  Robyn  Hood,  based  on  ballads,  was  probably 
printed  soon  after  1500.  The  actual  street  ballads  begin  about  1540.  For 
earlier  popular  songs  of  the  satirical  and  political  order  which  were  cir- 
culated in  manuscripts,  see  such  collections  as  Wright's  Political  Poems 
and  Songs,  2  vols..  Rolls  Series,  —  e.  g.  ii,  224,  where,  alx)ut  1449,  Talbot 
is  sung  as  a  dog  and  the  Earl  of  Suffolk  as  a  fox  "drevin  to  hole." 
With  this  "ballad"  cf.  Child,  no.  166,  The  Rose  of  England. 

*  Lettres  {Grands  Ecrivains),  i,  480,  note  4. 


EARLY  PRINTED  BALLADS  5 

journalism  of  the  Elizabethan  ballad-press  was  mixed  a 
deal  of  popular  songs,  reputable  and  disreputable,  and 
even,  as  the  Register  of  the  Stationers'  Company  can 
show,  here  and  there  a  traditional  ballad  of  Robin  Hood. 
Songs  made  in  the  city,  like  the  jingles  of  a  modern  con- 
cert-hall, got  into  the  country,  and  could  serve  as  a  charm 
for  every  poor  milkmaid  to  "chant  and  chirpe"  under 
her  cow  and  so  "let  down"  the  milk.'  Some  of  these 
songs,  we  know,  were  pretty  enough;  but  the  ballad 
of  commerce  tended  to  be  scurrilous  and  lewd.  Henry  ^/ 
Chettle,  in  his  "  Kind-Hart's  Dreame,"  gives  a  vivid  J 
picture  of  the  singing  and  selling  of  ballads  in  Essex. 
One  Barnes  and  his  two  sons  are  described,  these  in  their 
"  ballad-shambels  "  or  booth,  the  old  man  outside  leaning 
on  his  crab-tree  staff;  the  sons,  "one  in  a  squeaking 
treble,  the  other  in  an  ale-blown  base,  carowle  out  .  .  . 
adultrous  ribaudry."  If  there  is  any  one  line  of  the  song 
worse  than  the  rest,  says  Chettle,  "that  with  a  double 
repetition  is  lowdly  bellowed,"  as,  for  example,  — 

"  He  whipt  her  with  a  foxes  taile,  Barnes  Minor, 
He  whipt  her  with  a  foxes  taile,  Barnes  Major, 

'O  brave  boles,'  saith  Barnes  Maximus.  The  father 
leapes,  the  lubers  roare,  the  people  runne,  the  divell 
laughs,  God  lowers,  and  good  men  weepe."  Apparently 
Chettle  bewails  the  further  degeneration  of  a  degenerate 
art;    for  in  his  dream  Anthony  Now-now,  "an  od  old 

1  See  Whimzies  (1631),  a  curious  pamphlet  which  hits  off  in  alpha- 
betical order  the  "characters"  of  London  from  almanack-maker  down 
to  zealous  brother.    This  is  on  the  ballad-monger,  pp.  8-15. 


6  THE   BALLAD 

fellow  .  .  .  with  a  round  cap  ...  a  side-skirted  tawney 
coate  .  .  .  and  leather  buskins,"  after  playing  on  his 
treble  violl,  sign  of  his  profession,  a  "  huntsup,"  sends 
messages  to  the  "arch-overseers  of  the  ballad-singers  in 
London  and  elsewhere,"  lamenting  abuses  of  the  ballad 
press  unknown  in  his  day.  But  better  or  worse,  these 
fellows  who  now  hawked  about  the  printed  ballad,  and 
now  sang  the  scurrilous  and  lewd  songs  which  Chettle 
cites,  are  responsible  for  none  of  the  material  with  which 
we  are  concerned. 

Even  the  minstrel  of  more  romantic  associations  had 
nothing  to  do  with  the  making  of  those  typical  ballads 
of  tradition  which  form  the  bulk  and  give  the  quality  in 
any  collection  of  note.  Minstrels  before  the  Conquest, 
court  poets  like  Deor  and  wanderers  like  Widsith,  are 
out  of  the  question.  One  glance  at  Elizabethan  pam- 
phlets is  enough  to  fix  the  standing  of  that  "  rogue  by  act 
of  Parliament,"  the  ballad-singer;  and  what  he  was  and 
what  he  sang  in  later  time  is  even  more  decisive  against 
his  claims  to  traditional  balladry.  Before  Elizabethan 
days,  to  be  sure,  in  what  is  called  the  transition  period, 
he  was  a  far  more  important  personage.  He  made  money 
now  and  then. 

"  Here  lyeth,  under  this  marbyll  ston 
Riche  Alane,  the  ballid  man  ..." 

runs  a  mocking  epitaph  which  Wright  and  Halliwell  put 
in  the  fifteenth  century.  But  rich  Allans  had  nothing  to 
do  with  verse  beloved  and  sung  by  the  people;  they  were 
in  a  better  trade,  and  dealt  in  more  costly  stuff.    Warton 


THE  MINSTREL  7 

gives  from  monastery  records  a  long  list  of  gratuities  to 
minstrels;  and  he  thinks  that  "some  of  our  greater 
monasteries  kept  minstrels  of  their  own  in  regular  pay," 
precisely  as  the  lords  and  landed  gentry  kept  them,  and 
even  the  towns. ^  There  are  gifts  "to  Lord  Stafford's 
mimes,"  as  well  as  to  "the  mimes  of  Rugby."  But  this 
association  of  minstrels  with  the  castle  and  the  convent, 
with  the  aristocracy  of  wealth  and  power  and  with  the 
aristocracy  of  learning,  is  even  more  fatal  to  their  con- 
nection with  ballads  than  the  proof  of  minstrel  ribaldry 
and  a  degenerate  art.  Minstrels,  with  loose  folk  of  all 
sorts,  haunted  the  old  fairs,  as  in  the  story  of  Earl 
Randolph  and  his  friends  from  Chester.  They  may  have 
ministered  to  popular  mirth,  these  wandering  players, 
but  they  evidently  affected  strange  ways,  strange  speech, 
an  esoteric  craft,  and  doubtless  despised  such  homely 
traditional  songs  as  the  people  sang  at  their  village 
dances  and  over  their  daily  round  of  toil.  It  is  significant 
when  Robert  Brunne  says  that  he  writes  his  Chronicle 
"in  symple  speche"  and  "for  the  luf  of  symple  men," 
but  not  for  disours,  seggers,  and  harbours,  who  were  evi- 
dently fond  of  "strange  Inglis."  Humble  or  exalted, 
minstrels  inclined  to  the  modern,  the  difficult,  and  the  ^ 
\  elaborate,  in  song.  It  is  true  that  knights  of  the  thirteenth 
century  disguised   themselves   as   minstrels   when   they 

*  Minstrel,  as  a  later  official  term,  must  often  mean  a  performer  on 
musical  instruments,  town  piper,  or  what  not.  John  Selden's  father, 
says  Wood,  was  "a  sufficient  plebeian  and  delighted  much  in  music." 
The  parish  register  of  West  Tarring  has  "John,  the  sonne  of  John 
Selden,  the  minstrell."    See  Arber,  Selden's  Table  Talk,  p.  3. 


8  THE    BALLAD 

wished  to  spy,  very  much  as  Hind  Horn,  in  the  ballad, 
disguised  himself  as  a  beggar;  it  was  going  to  the  other 
extreme  from  knighthood.  Yet  both  had  the  grace  of 
song.  When  Johan  de  Raunpaygne,  in  the  story  of 
Fulk  Fitz-Warine,  takes  this  disguise,  he  goes  in  "very 
poor  dress  "  and  carries  a  great  staff.  For  his  good  news 
he  gets  a  cup  of  silver,  but  for  a  show  of  temper  is  nigh 
to  be  hanged.  When  his  news  turns  out  false,  the  noble 
victim  remarks  that  all  minstrels  are  liars.  Johan's  most 
remarkable  feat,  however,  is  his  appearance  before  the 
king  as  a  negro  minstrel,  —  "  blacked  all  over  except 
his  teeth."  Here  he  carries  a  tabor  to  accompany  his 
songs;  and  it  is  noteworthy  that  afterwards,  in  his  true 
part  as  knight  at  a  joust  in  France,  entering  the  lists, 
he  strikes  this  tabor  so  that  mount  and  vale  resound,  and 
the  very  horses  show  their  joy.  The  point  is,  that  knight 
and  minstrel  had  the  same  poetic  dialect. 

It  is  needless,  however,  to  dwell  on  the  life  of  minstrels 
at  this  time;  it  is  clear  that  they  are  not  responsible  for 
the  ballads.  Banned  by  the  Church,  alternately  petted 
and  reviled  by  the  lords  and  knights  whom  they  amused, 
they  practiced  every  art  of  the  entertainer,  and  whether 
in  poor  or  rich  estate  were  at  the  farthest  possible  re- 
move from  the  unlettered  and  artless  simplicity  which 
marks  genuine  ballads  of  tradition.  ^   Professor  Kittredge 

1  The  woman  ballad-singers  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries  need  no  investigation.  There  is  a  chap-book  in  the  Bod- 
leian library  which  purports  to  give  the  "confessions"  of  one  of  them. 
Her  medieval  prototype  may  be  seen  in  the  old  manuscript  illustra- 
tions. 


MINSTREL  AUTHORSHIP  UNTENABLE        9 

thus  sums  up  the  case  in  a  proposition,  as  he  says,  hardly 
to  be  "  controverted  by  any  scholar  who  is  famihar  with 
the  subject.  —  It  is  capable  of  practically  formal  proof 
that  for  the  last  two  or  three  centuries  the  English  and 
Scottish  ballads  have  not,  as  a  general  thing,  been  sung 
and  transmitted  by  professional  minstrels  or  their  re- 
presentatives. There  is  no  reason  whatever  for  believing 
that  the  state  of  things  between  1300  and  1600  was 
different,  in  this  regard,  from  that  between  1600  and 
1900  —  and  there  are  many  reasons  for  believing  that  it 
was  not  different."  He  goes  on  to  show  that  what  the 
minstrels  did  compose  was  work  of  an  order  totally 
different  from  ballads. 

Not  the  vocation  of  minstrels,  but  household  and  com- 
munal memory,  has  been  the  source  of  nearly  all  genuine  \ 
ballads  of  tradition.  John  Aubrey's  words  are  seldom  j 
quoted  in  full  about  that  ancient  way.  Speaking  of 
old  wives'  tales,  he  remarks  that  "  before  Woomen  were 
Readers,  y^  history  was  handed  down  from  mother  to 
daughter.  ...  So  my  nurse  had  the  history  of  the  Con-  j 
quest  down  to  Carl  I.  in  ballad; "  and  two  pages  later  he 
quotes  "what  my  nurse  was  wont  to  sing"  from  a  ballad 
about  Rosamond.  This  is  the  old  trail;  but  women  are 
all  readers  now,  the  schoolmaster  has  long  been  abroad, 
and  folk  take  the  literary  highroads.  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy 
gives  the  hint  of  this  "end  of  an  auld  sang"  in  his  ac- 
count of  the  mother  Durbeyiield  singing  ballads  which 
daughter  Tess,  with  her  superior  board-school  culture, 
disdains.     It  is  natural  to  think  of  minstrels  carrying 


10  THE   BALLAD 

ballads  from  land  to  land.  Here  is  far-come  stuff;  there 
is  the  far-come  carrier.  Minstrels,  one  shows,  carried 
this  or  that  ballad  from  Germany  to  Sweden;  one  con- 
cludes that  the  ballad  itself,  the  ballad  habit,  has  been 
so  imported.  But  common  sense  refuses  to  turn  the 
priimary  instincts  of  verse  and  song  and  dance  into  a 
commodity  first  made  nobody  knows  where  and  then 
distributed  over  Europe  by  these  literary  bagmen.  So 
we  come  back  to  the  vital  question  and  the  real  facts :  not 
only  is  it  impossible  to  connect  the  traditional  ballads 
with  minstrel  authorship,  but  we  find  that  they  belong 
demonstrably  and  absolutely  to  the  people.  That  it 
was  not  the  people  who  took  and  sang  the  minstrel's 
ditty,  but  rather  the^minstrel  who  intruded  upon  popular 
tradition,  one  learns  from  those  "evening  dances"  of 
the  young  folks  about  village  lindens  or  on  open  town 
squares  in  Germany,  where  girls  offered  the  garland  and 
youths  improvised  songs  for  the  prize.  Harmless  enough 
at  first,  the  custom  came  into  disrepute  and  was  for- 
bidden by  laws  of  the  sixteenth  century,  which  provide 
that  professional  singers,  spielleute,  who  "help"  in  these 
dances,  shall  be  imprisoned. 

So  the  minstrel  is  ruled  out  of  court.  At  first  sight  it 
seems  that  a  better  case  can  be  made  for  the  journalists 
themselves.  Who  made  the  ballad  of  occasion  that  Fal- 
staff  had  in  mind,  Helena  of  "All 's  Well,"  poor  Pamela 
in  Richardson's  novel,  and  perhaps  great  Roland  him- 
self when  he  exhorted  his  men  to  fight  so  that  no  "  bad 
songs  "  should  be  sung  about  them  ?    These  songs  made 


THE   JOURNALISTIC   BALLADS  11 

history.  Selden,  talking  of  libels  as  straws  which  tell  the 
way  of  the  wind  when  "casting  up  a  stone  does  not," 
remarks  that  "more  solid  things  do  not  show  the  com- 
plexion of  the  times  so  well  as  ballads."  Or,  on  the  other 
side  of  the  account,  and  as  with  newspapers  of  to-day, 
while  half  the  world  tried  to  keep  out  of  ballads,  doubt- 
less the  other  half  tried  to  get  in.  Note  the  appeal  ^ 
of  Geordie's  wife,  after  she  has  saved  her  husband  from 
the  block :  — 

"  '  Gar  print  me  ballants  weel,'  she  said, 
*  Gar  print  me  ballants  many, 
Gar  print  me  ballants  weel,'  she  said,      ^^^ 
'  That  I  am  a  worthy  ladie '  "  — 

which  may  be  a  corruption  of  the  wife's  real  remark,  but 
shows  suflSciently  the  current  feeling  in  the  case.  Suppose 
that  Geordie's  wife  really  was  printed  in  this  way!  Here 
is  the  ballad.  Who  made  it?  Why  should  the  journalists 
not  have  celebrated  such  folk  as  well  as  the  typical  "cat 
that  looked  out  of  a  gutter "  .^  Among  all  the  printed 
ballads,  why  could  not  this  or  that  hit  upon  a  traditional 
theme  and  give  it  adequate  expression?  If  Dekker,  for 
example,  arrant  playwright  and  man  of  the  city,  could 
write  the  sweetest  and  most  rural  lyric  of  his  time,  why 
not  assume  a  few  popular  ballads  of  the  best  sort  from 
that  early  Grub  Street?  Isaak  Walton's  "cleanly"  room 
in  "an  honest  alehouse"  had  "twenty  ballads  stuck  about 
the  wall."  The  milk-woman  who  sang  Kit  Marlowe's 
song  for    Piscator,   named  also   "Chevy    Chace"   and 

I  Child,  no.  209,  B,  30. 


12  THE    BALLAD 

"  Johnny  Armstrong"  in  her  Hst.  Captain  Cox  had  "  great 
oversight  ...  in  matters  of  storie;"he  collected  "  histo- 
ries" like  "Robinhood,  Clim  of  the  Clough,  the  King  and 
the  Tanner,  and  the  Nutbrown  Maid,"  and  "  ballets  and 
songs"  like  "Broom,  broom  on  hill  .  .  .  Bony  lass  upon  a 
green  .  .  .  and  a  hundred  more  he  hath,  fair  wrapt  up  in 
parchment."  ^  Are  we  to  make  arbitrary  divisions  ?  To 
this,  of  course,  we  reply  that  many  traditional  ballads  were 
printed  for  the  broadside  press.  But  there  is  a  closer 
thrust  to  parry.  Two  of  the  traditional  and  popular 
pieces  which  are  found  in  Child's  collection  were  actu- 
ally printed,  along  with  occasional  but  original  verse,  in 
Tom  Deloney's  "  Jacke  of  Newbery,"  ^  a  prose  tale. 
Why  not  assume  that  Deloney  made  them?  Now  it 
is  just  here  that  the  genuine  ballad  of  the  people  vin- 
dicates its  popular  source  as  well  as  its  popular  vogue. 
Nobody  can  uphold  even  the  probability  that  Deloney, 
the  "ballating  silk- weaver,"  as  Nashe  called  him,  whose 
undoubted  work  lies  before  us  in  much  doggerel  and  a 
piece  or  so  of  some  literary  merit, ^  composed  these  two 
ballads  printed  in  his  tale.  It  is  not  merely  because  he 
says  of  "Flodden  Field"  that  "the  Commons  of  Eng- 

^  See  Laneham's  Letter  from  Kenilworth,  1575,  in  Furnivall's  Cap- 
tain Cox,  Ballad  Society  Publications,  London,  1871. 

^  Historie  of  John  Winchcombe,  otheneise  called,  etc.,  etc.  —  See  the 
reprint  of  R.  Sievers  in  Palaestra,  xx.w'i,  Berlin,  1904,  pp.  184,  195. 
Sievers  concedes  a  possibility  of  Deloney's  authorship  of  Flodden  Field, 
but  balks  absolutely  at  such  a  case  for  the  Fair  Flower  of  Northumber- 
land. "Beyond  question,"  he  says,  "we  have  here  to  do  with  a  genuine 
popular  ballad  of  the  north  country."   Page  121. 

^  The  Spanish  Lady's  Love  is  still  a  favorite. 


DELONEY'S  BALLADS  13 

land  made  this  Song,^  which  to  this  day  is  not  forgotten 
of  many,"  though  the  phrase,  as  implying  tradition  and 
a  kind  of  communal  authorship,  is  interesting  enough; 
one  has  simply  to  com})are  the  two  with  Deloney's  own 
ballads,  or  to  compare  ballads  of  purely  traditional 
origin  with  journalistic  ballads  at  large,  to  see  that  the 
gulf  between  can  be  bridged  by  no  assumption  of  the 
same  origins.^ 

So  far  as  the  ballad  itself,  then,  is  concerned,  we  have 
'cleared  the  field  of  intruders.  The  minstrel's  making  is 
dismissed,  and  with  it  the  ballad  of  commerce,  the  rout 
of  lewd  and  scurrilous  songs  and  of  harmless  if  mawkish 
and  sensational  journalism.  The  ballad  of  our  quest  is 
a  narrative  lyric  handed  down  from  generation  to  gen- 
'eration  of  a  homogeneous  and  unlettered  community. 
Such  ballads,  of  course,  now  and  then  finding  their  way 
into  the  singer's  basket  and  into  the  stalls,  got  corrupted 
in  the  process;  yet  they  show,  even  in  this  state,  their 
exotic  character,  as  may  be  seen  by  the  rude,  stirring 

'  He  calls  the  other  also  a  "song,"  just  as  Sidney  spoke  of  "the 
old  song  of  Percy  and  Douglas." 

^  Sievers,  in  his  just  quoted  Thomas  Deloney,  pp.  130  ff.,  gives  a  few 
of  the  differentiating  qualities  which  sunder  into  three  groups,  first,! 
these  "street-ballads,"  as  he  calls  them,  such  as  Deloney  wrote,  secondly, 
the  ballads  of  art,  like  The  Nut-Brown  Maid,  and,  thirdly,  genuine 
ballads  of  the  people.  Journalism  is  a  better  word  for  the  first  group. 
Deloney,  for  example,  reports  in  fairly  vivid  verse  a  great  fire,  the  exe- 
cution of  Babington  and  other  conspirators,  battles  at  sea,  and  all  the 
rest.  It  is  interesting,  further,  to  see  him  in  true  journalistic  spirit  supply 
a  popular  demand  for  sensations  by  falling  back  upon  the  old  clironicles. 
Some  of  his  "reports"  became  universally  popular,  and  were  remem- 
bered into  the  eighteenth  century. 


V 


14  THE    BALLAD 

verses  of  "Bewick  and  Grahame."  But  we  still  have 
the  adjective,  that  equivocal  word  "popular;"  and  on 
the  meaning  of  "popular"  centres  the  main  dispute. 
Of  all  the  definitions  offered,  and  they  are  innumerable, 
we  can  make  two  clearly  sundered  classes :  the  definition 
by  destination,  and  the  definition  by  origins.  Now  it  is 
clear  that  only  a  definition  by  origins  really  defines.  When 
Aristotle  sets  off  from  actual,  artistic,  deliberate  poetry 
a  mass  of  antecedent  verse  marked  by  improvisation, 
song,  and  choral  dance,  or  when  Mr.  George  Meredith  ^ 
says  that  ballads  grow  "like  mushrooms  from  a  scuffle 
of  feet  on  grass  overnight,"  one  is  on  the  trail,  though  by 
no  means  at  the  finish,  of  a  definition  by  origins;  and 
such  a  definition  can  be  used  for  purposes  of  exclusion 
as  well  as  of  inclusion  in  making  up  the  ballad  corpus. 
If,  however,  one  simply  defines  the  popular  ballad  as  a 
narrative  lyric  which  in  course  of  oral  tradition  has  come 
into  favor  with  the  people,  then  there  is  nothing  but  the 
law  of  copyright  and  the  personal  fame  of  Mr.  Kipling 
which  could  serve  at  some  future  day  to  exclude  his 
"Danny  Deever"  from  a  collection  of  English  popular 
ballads  or  to  differentiate  it  from  "Hobie  Noble"  and 
"Jock  o'  the  Side."  There  are  three  hundred  and  five 
individual  ballads  in  Professor  Child's  volumes;  and  in 
his  opinion  the  collection  was  complete.  Mr.  Andrew 
Lang's  ingenious  plea  ^  for  "Auld  Maitland"  does  not 

^  The  Amazing  Marriage,  chap,  xxxiv. 

2  See  Folk  Lore,  xiii,  191  ff.   The  ballad  is  printed  in  the  old  edition 
of  ballads  made  by  Mr.  Child,  but  he  calls  it  a  modern  imitation. 


"POPULAR"  TO   BE   DEFINED   BY   ORIGINS    15 

really  affect  the  case.  He  thinks  it  a  popular  and  tradi- 
tional ballad;  Mr.  Child  thought  it  spurious.  Both  agree 
in  the  tests.  So  it  is  with  inclusions.  There  are  ballads  in 
Child's  final  volume  no  better  than  "  Auld  Maitland,"  not 
so  good,  which  the  editor  would  gladly  have  jettisoned; 
they  are  inserted,  as  he  tells  us,  by  the  advice  of  Grundt- 
vig,  and  on  the  chance  that  they  preserve  a  few  shreds 
of  tradition.  Buchan's  ballads  from  the  north  of  Scot- 
land are  in  some  cases  more  than  doubtful;  but  often 
they  may  be  sound;  and  so  they  find  entrance.  Dr. 
Murray  scoffs  at  the  idea  that  "Thomas  Rymer"  grew  by 
"oral  tradition"  out  of  the  romance.  There  will  always 
be  challenges  of  the  right  of  entry  for  this  or  that  ballad. 
The  exclusions,  on  the  other  hand,  are  seldom  matters 
of  dispute.  "The  Children  in  the  Wood,"  the  Agincourt 
songs,  both  the  Cambridge  and  the  Harleian,  and  "  The 
Nut-Brown  Maid  "  can  come  into  no  collection  which 
makes  the  popular  and  the  traditional  its  test,  —  pro- 
vided the  test  be  firm.  For  these  three-hundred-odd 
ballads  are  either  the  surviving  specimens  of  a  genre,  a 
literary  species,^  which  is  called  popular  because  in  its 
main  qualities  it  is  derived  from  the  "people,"  or  else 
they  are  the   somewhat   arbitrary  collection  of    poems 

'  "A  distinct  and  very  important  species  of  poetry,"  says  Professor 
Child  in  his  article  on  Ballads  in  Johnson's  Cyclopadia  ;  and  he  calls 
fifteenth-century  ballads  "the  creation  ...  of  the  whole  people,  great 
and  humble,  who  were  still  one  in  all  essentials."  He  rejects,  of  course,  the 
miraculous,  mystic  side  of  the  Grimms'  idea  of  popular  creation;  but  he 
insists  on  popular  origins.  Poor  and  imitated  ballads  of  later  time,  he 
says, "  belong  to  a  different  genus;  they  are  products  of  a  low  kind  of  arl" 


16  THE    BALLAD 

which  had  in  some  way  become  favorite  and  even 
traditional,  apart  from  print,  with  mainly  unlettered 
folk.  In  the  first  case  they  can  be  treated  as  a  closed 
literary  account,  and,  like  the  medieval  romance,  the 
ancient  epic,  as  an  outcome  of  conditions  which  no 
longer  exist  and  cannot  be  revived.  In  the  second  case, 
while  conditions  of  oral  transmission  may  be  changed, 
there  is  nothing  to  prevent  the  daily  production  of 
ballads  which  may  become  in  time  as  popular  as  any 
in  our  collections.  Moreover,  it  is  possible,  under  the 
second  case,  that  patient  sifting  of  material  might  cut 
away  a  quarter,  a  third,  a  half,  of  these  ballads  and  give 
them  to  poets  of  note  and  name.^  In  the  interest  of 
mere  stability,  then,  one  would  like  to  achieve  a  satis- 
factory definition  by  origins  and  so  defend  the  genre, 
fortify  its  frontiers,  and  establish  a  test  and  privilege  of 
citizenship  in  balladry.  Is  there  such  a  thing  as  poetry 
of  the  people  as  opposed  to  poetry  of  art?  If  there  is 
such  poetry  of  the  people,  is  the  ballad  to  be  counted  as 
belonging  to  it,  or  at  least  as  derived  from  it  ? 

II.     COMMUNAL   AUTHORSHIP 

Poetry  is  now  regarded  as  the  concern  of  that  per- 
son whom  Emerson  once  called  "the  young  man  in 
a  library."  True,  the  poet  is  anything  but  a  pedant, 
and  much  learning  of    the  laborious  sort    has  rather 

1  This  process  is  frankly  undertaken  by  Mr.  Henderson  in  his  recent 
edition  of  Scott's  Minstrelsy:  he  thinks,  moreover,  that  the  "chaff" 
in  Professor  Child's  collection  "  is  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  wheat." 


THE  MODERN  POET  A  BOOKMAN  17 

hindered  than  helped  him.  The  Renaissance  did  away 
with  that  distinction  of  sterile  medieval  times  which 
restricted  the  title  of  poet,  even  as  late  as  Dante,  to  the 
writer  in  Latin;  but  it  still  fettered  him  forever  to  the 
printed  page,  as  he  had  been  fettered  in  older  days  to 
the  manuscript.  Pedes,  says  the  Anglo-Saxon  J^lfric 
in  a  Latin  Grammar  which  he  wrote  for  his  country- 
men in  their  own  tongue,  "pedes  are  'feet,'  with  which 
Poetae,  that  is,  the  learned  sceopas,  set  their  songcraft  in 
books."  Here  is  the  real  point.  Here  is  where  we  begin 
to  spell  poetry  with  capital  letters.  The  poet,  to  be  sure, 
need  not  be  learned,  and  his  art  is  no  longer  a  depart- 
ment of  what  the  medieval  man  called  grammar;  but 
to  set  one's  own  songcraft  in  books,  to  take  heart  and 
fire  from  the  songcraft  in  other  books,  is  the  case  of  the 
most  inspired  poet  and  the  most  original.  Dante  himself 
and  his  Vergil  confess  it;  Chaucer,  Milton,  Gray,  have 
vindicated  the  rights  of  the  scholar  in  English  poetry. 
So  that,  with  a  little  harmless  stretching  of  the  terms,  it 
may  be  said  that  all  which  now  goes  under  the  name  of 
poetry,  though  not  under  the  name  of  verse  or  song,  is 
written  by  one  of  these  young  men  in  a  library  for  an- 
other young  man  in  another  library.  And  there  is  nothing 
in  the  case  to  bewail;  no  modern  Rousseau  need  beat 
his  breast  over  the  reign  of  books.  Herder,  the  apostle 
of  popular  verse,  who  could  on  occasion  wax  sarcastic 
about  the  "paper  eternity"  of  a  modern  poet  as  com- 
pared with  the  effect  of  a  Homer  "  singing  in  the  street," 
had  to  concede  that  the  transcendent  if  solitary  benefit 


18  THE    BALLAD 

of  the  art  of  printing  is  "  the  invisible  commerce  of  minds 

and    hearts"    which    springs   from    it.      Sainte-Beuve's 

"  ivory  tower  "  is  the  reader's  refuge  as  well  as  the  poet's 

stronghold;    if   one   cannot   now  hear  Homer  "singing 

in  the  streets,"  this  loss    is    more    than    offset  by  the 

gain  of  reading  him  in  the  study.    It  is  true  that  persistent 

silence  of  appeal  has  robbed  poetry  of  a  part  of  its  charm; 

but  the  printed  word  still  has  a  suggestive  power.    As 

Rostand  prettily  says,  — 

.  .  .  "La  merveille 
Du  beau  mot  mysterieux, 
C'est  qu'on  le  lit  de  I'oreille, 
Et  qu'on  I'ecoute  des  yeux." 

Only  romantic  folly  could  turn  its  back  upon  the  triumphs 
of  literature,  strictly  so  called,  and  assert  superiority  for 
illiterate  verse.  Poetrv  made  in  the  tower,  the  "  library," 
has  for  compensation  the  range  of  all  experience.  Its 
emotion  is  wide  as  humanity;  its  reflection  is  cosmic. 
Its  maker,  even  in  common  phrase,  is  held  to  have  some- 
thing of  the  divine  and  the  inexplicable,  stands  far  above 
his  fellows,  and  looks  out  on  the  universe.  But  how  came 
he  to  such  height,  such  prospect  ?  He  is  standing  on  the 
great  edifice  of  poetry  itself;  and  when  one  asks  about 
this,  and  not  about  the  chosen  few  who  inhabit  its  high 
places,  when  one  considers  poetry  as  a  human  achieve- 
ment, figures  like  the  library  and  the  tower  are  inade- 
quate.' Poetry  is  a  vast  pyramid,  widening,  but  losing  in 
aesthetic  significance,  as  one  approaches  its  base.  Sands  of 
time  have  drifted  about  it;  the  huge  courses  of  its  foun- 


THE   BEGINNINGS  OF  POETRY  19 

dation  are  buried  forever  from  view  in  their  full  reach  and 
plan,  and  only  some  happy  chance  of  record  or  survival 
affords  a  glimpse  of  the  lower  masonry.  Here,  indeed, 
on  the  larger  level,  was  no  far  view  of  time  and  space, 
no  incitement  to  solitary  but  cosmic  thinking;  yet  here, 
in  compensation,  were  ampler  room,  closer  touch  with 
facts,  and  commerce  with  one's  fellows.  Opposed  to  that — 
memorial  and  prophetic  dreamer  on  the  peak,  there  is 
seen,  in  the  primitive  stages  of  poetry,  and  in  certain 
survivals,  a  throng  of  people  without  skill  to  read  or 
write,  without  ability  to  project  themselves  into  the 
future,  or  to  compare  themselves  with  the  past,  or  even 
to  range  their  experience  with  the  experience  of  other 
communities,  gathered  in  festal  mood,  and,  by  loud 
song,  perfect  rhythm,  and  energetic  dance,  expressing 
their  feelings  over  an  event  of  quite  local  origin,  present 
appeal,  and  common  interest.  Here,  in  point  of  evolution, 
is  the  human  basis  of  poetry,  the  foundation  courses  of  ^ 
the  pyramid;  in  point  of  poetic  process  here  is  the  social 
as  opposed- to  the  individual  element.  This  festal  throng 
and  its  rude  choral  verse  are  just  as  much  a  fact,  apart 
from  questions  of  value,  as  the  young  man  in  a  library 
and  his  poem.  The  two  pairs  differ,  not  merely  in  degree 
of  excellence,  but  in  essence,  in  kind ;  and  this  distinction 
has  been  made  from  the  beginnings  of  critical  effort. 
Aristotle  excluded  improvised  and  choral  song  not  only 
from  the  valued  file  of  verse,  but  altogether  from  the 
poetic  category ;  yet  in  these  rude  chants  he  recognized  the 
sources  of  poetry  itself.     True,  he  begins  actual  poetry 


20  THE    BALLAD 

only  with  the  poet  and  the  genius.  "iEschylus  dimin- 
ished the  importance  of  the  chorus;"  and  behind  him 
looms  up  Thespis  the  founder;  there  is  always  some 
figure  of  this  kind  about  whom  we  sing  the  deus  illefuit, 
the  hero-myth  in  arts  as  in  practical  life.  "  Let  us  now 
praise  famous  men  .  ,  .  leaders  of  the  people  .  .  .  such 
as  found  out  musical  tunes  and  recited  verses  in  writ- 
ing," says  Ecclesiasticus.  And  here,  indeed,  we  seem  to 
have  inverted  the  pyramid.  Poetry  is  imitation  of  the 
masters,  we  say;  but  we  say  no  truth  in  terms  of  poetic 
development.  The  masters  are  really  successive  focal 
points,  results,  each  of  them,  of  a  process  of  evolution, 
summaries  and  not  beginnings.  They  take  at  first  their 
tune,  their  occasion,  their  sympathy  and  sentiment,  from 
the  chorus  and  the  dancing,  singing  throng,  precisely  as 
Aristotle  points  out;  on  this  rhythmic  and  social  ma- 
terial they  stamp  their  individual  art.  In  later  stages 
they  begin  with  the  literary  traditions,  the  temper  of  the 
time,  public  demand,  which  are  subtler  elements  indeed, 
but  quite  as  communal  and  conventional  in  essence  as 
the  old  choral  conditions.  The  pyramid  allegory  is  so  far 
misleading  that  it  fails  to  carry  the  constant  interplay 
of  artist  and  throng  in  long  reaches  of  poetic  develop- 
ment, as  if  rather  there  had  been  a  succession  of  pyra- 
mids; it  is  true,  however,  in  its  general  implication  that 
the  course  of  poetry  has  run  from  a  state  where  social 
conditions  were  dominant,  to  a  state  where  individuals 
are  so  in  the  foreground  of  art  and  the  chorus  or  throng 
so  deep  in  the  background,  that  we  talk  only  of  poets,  of 


THE   CHORAL  FOUNDATION  21 

their_poems,  and  no  more  of  the  undifferentiated  mass, 
the  raw  material,  whence  they  derive.  Yet  this  raw 
material  has  always  been  recognized  in  a  romantic  and 
incidental  way.  Tibullus,  in  a  pretty  elegy,  makes  his 
primitive  farmer  the  first  to  sing  "rustic"  words  to  a 
regular  rhythm  —  certo  pede  —  and  first  to  essay  the 
choral  dance;  while  the  earliest  songs  of  labor,  as  he 
thinks,  were  those  that  first  resounded  to  the  country 
wife's  spinning-wheel.^  Mention  and  recognition  are  not 
all.  Poetry  of  the  people,  as  distinguished  from  the 
poetry  of  art,  has  come  upon  the  record,  a  transfer 
mainly  due  to  the  Romantic  School.  Since  Rousseau's 
day,  the  rich  man  and  the  wise  man  have  really  circum- 
navigated the  globe;  and  the  sciences  of  anthropology, 
ethnology,  sociology,  are  the  result,  sciences  which  have 
made  sure  the  old  theoretical  and  critical  antithesis 
of  popular  and  artistic  verse.  Ethnology,  indeed,  has 
gathered  an  immense  amount  of  savage  or  half-savage 
"  literature,"  in  which,  under  certain  limitations,  thescholar 
can  see  a  reflection  of  poetry  in  its  primitive  form.  The 
other  sciences  have  given  other  help.  It  was  a  professor 
of  sociology^  who  demonstrated  the  vast  importance  of 
this  primitive  verse  in  early  stages  of  man's  social  career, 
and  the  great  part  played  by  choral  rhythm  in  the  mak- 
ing of  society  itself.     The  modern  science   of   folklore, 

'  Discussions  about  the  relative  priority  of  epic,  Ijric,  drama,  were  1 1 
really  settled  by  Miillenhoff,  who  showed  that  choral  poetry,  inclusive  » 
of  all  three,  is  the  primitive  form;  and  here  the  German  scholar  joined  \ 
hands  with  Aristotle. 

^  Biicher,  Arbeit  und  Rhythmus. 


22  THE    BALLAD 

moreover,  has  actually  revealed  amid  byways  of  civilized 
life  a  host  of  survivals  in  song,  dance,  chorals  of  the 
festal  year,  refrains  of  labor  and  the  march,  all  point- 
ing to  a  time  when  such  verse  was  found  everywhere 
in  Europe,  and  sprang  from  social  conditions  under 
which  the  universal  gift  of  improvisation  was  still 
mainly  unchecked. 

No  sensible  critic  now  quarrels  outright  with  these 
conclusions  of  ethnology  and  folklore.  None  denies  either 
the  survivals  or  the  mass  of  surely  indicated  but  van- 
ished verse  made  among  the  people  by  the  people,  rather 
than,  as  is  the  process  of  authorship,  outside  of  the 
,  people  for  the  people.  Improvisation  of  verses  in  a  sing- 
^  ing,  dancing  throng  is  a  fact  assured  for  a  vast  range 
of  times  and  places.  The  critic  contents  himself  by  say- 
ing with  Aristotle  that  these  improvisations  are  not  poetry 
and  do  not  even  result  in  the  popular  ballad;  the  gap, 
he  says,  between  popular  verse  and  popular  ballads  has 
not  been  bridged.  It  will  be  well,  therefore,  not  to  take 
the  matter  for  granted.  We  must  look  at  two  or  three 
positive  statements  by  way  of  proof  that  homogeneous, 
unlettered  communities  have  existed  at  times  and  places 
which  are  not  remote ;  and  we  must  find  out  what 
sort  of  verse  resulted  under  these  conditions.  Radloff, 
who  studied,  at  the  closest  possible  range,  the  life  of 
certain  tribes  in  souther^-^beria,  found  that  if  isolation 
from  other  influences  be  granted,  the  homogeneous  folk 
is  a  fact.  "  An  almost  inconceivable  uniformity,"  he  says, 
marks  the  tribe.    In  five  volumes  of  patient  record  and 


<s 


ETHNOLOGICAL  EVIDENCE  23 

unerring  critical  skill,  the  author  presents,  not  a  theory 
of  popular  poetry,  but  the  body  of  it  in  actual  presence,  t/^ 
and  a  careful  account  of  the  conditions  under  which  it 
is  produced.  More  than  this,  he  shows  that  wherever 
contact  with  literature  was  felt  in  any  force,  there  the  folk 
song  and  the  ballad,  along  with  that  knack  of  improvi- 
sation which  produced  them,  declined,  and  were  in  a  fair 
way  to  disappear  before  the  poetry  of  the  learned  poet. 
No  sociological  parallels  are  absolute;  but  this  popular 
"  literature "  observed  amid  the  steppes  of  southern 
Siberia  can  at  least  establish  a  probability  for  the  same 
kind  of  literature  under  similar  conditions  in  medieval 
Europe.  But  Radloff's  account  is  not  an  isolated  case. 
The  same  tale  is  told  over  and  over  again;  it  is  merely 
a  matter  of  chance  in  the  extent  to  which  old  ruins  have 
been  spared  and  modern  survivals  have  been  accessible. 
Isolation  is  a  prime  preservative  in  popular  verse.  How  ^ 
far  George  Borrow  '  really  knew  his  Basques  and  their 
songs  may  be  a  question;  but  his  account  is  borne  out 
by  more  exact  inquiry.  They  have,  he  says,  no  poet  or 
poetry  ;  but  all  of  them  sing,  and  they  sing  "songs,  bal- 
lads, and  stanzas,"  —  the  latter,  no  doubt,  improvisations 
of  the  common  European  type.  The  music  is  martial 
and  fine;  "but  such  words!  Nothing  can  be  imagined 
more  stupid,  commonplace  and^uhmteresting,"  —  that  is, 
uninteresting  to  George  Borrow.    Here  and  there,  how- 

1  Bible  in  Spain,  ii,  393  f.  See  also  F.  Michel,  Le  Pays  Basque, 
Paris,  1857,  pp.  214  f.,  and  Blade,  Dissertation  sur  les  Chants  Heroiques 
des  Basques,  Paris,  1866,  pp.  6  fF. 


24  THE    BALLAD 

ever,  something  of  demonstrable  interest,  if  not  of  poetic 
value,  springs  from  popular  improvisation;  and  for  this 
reason  our  third  case  is  perhaps  the  most  instructive  of 
all.  On  the  remote  Faroe  Islands,  where  the  community 
even  now  is  homogeneous  to  a  remarkable  degree,^ 
where  the  old  dances,  with  joined  hands,  in  a  great  circle, 
are  still  danced  to  the  tune  of  a  traditional  ballad  which 
all  must  sing,  and  where  on  occasion  every  member  of  a 
festive  throng  must  still  improvise  his  stanza,  conditions 
of  a  century  ago  favored  communal  verse  in  a  measure 
seldom  found  with  folk  of  such  an  advanced  stage  of 
civilization.  The  ballad  was  and  is  sung  by  this  people 
"not,  like  dance-music,  simply  to  order  their  steps," 
but  "by  its  meaning  and  contents,  to  waken  certain 
feelings.  The  dancers  by  their  gestures  and  expressions 
.  .  .  take  pains  ...  to  show  the  various  contents." 
They  sang,  to  be  sure,  many  old  songs  about  Sigurd, 
the  hero  of  Icelandic  literary  traditions.  This,  however, 
was  not  all.  They  could  also  make  a  new  ballad,  in  most 
dramatic  fashion,  at  the  dance;  as,  for  example,  when 
some  fisherman  has  had  a  mishap  with  his  boat,  sturdy 
companions  push  him  out  into  the  dancing  throng,  and 
first  one  and  then  another  stanza  is  improvised  upon  the 
fatal  theme,  until  a  complete  story  of  the  situation,  with 
much  repetition,  we  may  be  sure,  uproarious  refrain, 
and  considerable  dramatic  action,  is  attained.     If  the 

^  The  modern  instances  are  taken  from  N.  Annandale,  Tl'ie  Faroes 
and  Iceland,  Oxford,  1905,  pp.  42,  62  ff.;  the  older  account  is  from 
Lyngye's  Foer^ske  Quceder,  etc..  Randers,  1822,  pp.  viii,  14. 


POETRY  OF  THE   PEOPLE  25 

song  wins  general  favor,  so  the  good  missionary  says, 
it  is  remembered  and  sung  from  year  to  year,  —  a  gen- 
uine traditional  and  communal  ballad. 

There  can  be  no  question,  then,  of  the  facts.  Popular 
improvisation  at  the  dance  has  been  the  source  of  cer- 
tain traditional  lyric  narratives;  and  ethnology  could 
pile  up  similar  evidence  from  her  stores  of  observation 
among  less  civilized  races  all  over  the  world.  But  there  • 
is  no  need  to  draw  further  upon  these  records.  Every- 
body must  admit  the  existence  of  this  poetry  of  the  peo- 

pie  made  under  conditions  radically  different  from  those  ^  * 
which  determine  the  making  of  artistic  poetry.  Conces- 
sion to  the  popular  muse  goes  even  farther;  and  one 
admits  that  only  a  while  ago  she  was  knocking  at  our 
doors.  Europe,  until  a  very  recent  date,  still  rang  in  all 
rural  places  to  the  echo  of  refrain  and  chorus  made  by  '^ 
labor  in  house  or  field,  by  festal  mirth  at  the  dance,  at 
wedding  and  harvest-home,  and  by  communal  sorrow  at 
the  funeral.    Soldiers  even  now  sing  their  iterating  and  • 

cumulative  chorus  on  the  march.  Although  a  careless 
challenge  is  now  and  then  offered  to  the  idea  that  "pop- 
ular" can  be  in  these  cases  an  adjective  by  origins, 
critics  are  fairly  content  to  hand  over  all  this  choral, 
iterative,  and  nugatory  verse  to  the  antiquarian  or  to  the 
folklore  enthusiast  and  bid  him  label  the  stuff  as  he  sees 
fit,  provided  he  do  not  call  it  poetry.  It  js  masterless 
in  every  sense,  "  orphan "  making,  as  the  Elizabethans 
would  say;  no  Burns,  no  Villon  and  Dunbar,  a  pair 
whom  recent  suspicion  accuses  of  making  many  of  the 


26  THE    BALLAD 

actual  ballads,  will  claim  it.  But  the  "people"  sing 
other  verses.  The  Norwegian  peasant  does  not  only 
improvise  his  stev ;  the  Italian  girls,  as  they  gather 
olives,  can  sing  something  else  than  the  stornelli  which 
fly  back  and  forth  from  tree  to  tree;  the  Bavarian  youth 
and  maiden,  facing  each  other  at  the  dance,  have  or  had 
other  songs  than  their  isolated  stanzas  of  praise  or  blame 
exchanged  on  the  spur  of  the  occasion;  the  Faroe  folk 
not  merely  improvised  verses  about  luckless  fishermen, 
but  chanted  old  lays  of  Sigurd;  and  the  cottager  of 
England  or  Scotland,  besides  rough  chorus  of  harvest- 
home,  knows  or  did  know  certain  anonymous  verses,  of 
the  same  kind  and  spirit,  to  be  sure,  but  with  such  use  of 
literary  or  romantic  stuff,  such  an  aesthetic  appeal,  and 
such  a  satisfactory  coherence  of  parts,  as  to  make  the 
critic  prick  his  ears.  "  What  are  these  ? '],  he  asks.  "  Bal- 
lads," he  is  answered ;"  the  popular  ballad  of  Europe, 
traditional  for  five  centuries."  But  the  critic  at  once 
asserts  a  difi'erence  in  the  two  kinds  of  popular  verse. 
I  He  concedes  to  the  throng  its  odds  and  ends  of  rime, 
'its  rude  refrain,  its  iterated  and  unmeaning  choral;  he 
claims  these  ballads  as  poems,  and  begins  a  search  for 
their  poets.  They  own,  he  thinks,  a  shaping  hand.  They 
differ  absolutely  from  any  mere  collocation  of  verses 
made  in  alternate  suggestion  to  the  rhythm  of  refrain 
and  dance.  They  have  a  narrative  often  traced  to  literary 
sources,  and  are  informed  by  that  epic  purpose  impos- 
sible as  outcome  of  mere  festal  improvisation.  Trained 
to  test  his  material  by  classical  standards,  the  critic  is 


THE   CRITIC   AND  THE   BALLAD  27 

sure  that  ballads  are  popular  only  by  destination  and  not 
by  origin.  If  they  lie  in  the  world's  literary  waste-basket 
along  with  really  popular  trash,  it  is  simply  because  they 
have  lost  their  original  signatures. 

It  must  be  conceded  that  the  critic  makes  out  a  good 
case,  so  long  as  one  listens  only  to  his  side  of  it;  and  the 
other  side  seems  very  remote.  Students^of^opular  po£try 
pile  up  proof  of  communal  makings,  of  Siberian  flytings 
in  verse,  of  Faroe  improvisations;  for  our  immediate 
problem,  however,  these  arguments  seem  like  "Bohe- 
mian villages,"  and  the  critic  not  only  puffs  finely  into 
space  the  notion  that  folk  anywhere  out  of  wonderland 
—  or  Siberia  —  can  make  anything  like  a  coherent  poem 
by  festal  collaboration,  but  proceeds  to  trace  such  an 
actual  ballad  as  "Tam  Lane"  in  great  part  to  Burns, 
and  to  assign  the  whole  of  "Kinmont  Willie"  to  Scott. 
With  consummate  ease  he  tracks  *  a  lyric  of  Schiller 
through  all  sorts  of  popular  corruptions,  or  a  mawkish  bit 
of  sentimental  verse  into  a  dozen  varying  versions  all 
claimed  by  the  "people;"  and  he  thinks  he  has  solved 
the  problem  of  traditional  ballads,  and  cheerfully  as- 
sumes that  this  study  of  poetic  distortion  by  the  lower 
classes  represents  the  facts  of  oral  tradition  in  homoge- 
neous communities  now  unknown.  He  laughs  at  Siberia 
and  the  Faroe  Isles.  But  candid  readers  must  bear  with 
Siberia  and  the  Faroe  Isles,  must  put  aside  the  tempta- 
tions of  Burns  and  Scott,  and  must  admit  that  the  ballad 
has  two  handles.  There  is  the  "  popular"  handle,  joined 
*  See  John  Meier,  Kunstlied  im  Volksmunde,  1906,  pp.  xiv,  flf. 


28  THE    BALLAD 

in  the  piece  with  elements  for  which  modern  poetic 
methods  cannot  account;  and  there  is  the  " aesthetic" 
handle,  joined  also  in  the  piece  with  characteristics  due 
to  something  better  than  rustic  improvisations.  Lusty 
pulling  in  these  contrary  directions  has  been  go\ng  on 
for  decades,  like  a  tug  of  war;  the  question  itself  gets 
little  advance  by  such  treatment,  and  it  is  time  to  ap- 
proach the  ballad  in  some  more  rational  way. 

III.     COMMUNAL    POETRY    OTHER   THAN    BALLADS 

Briefly  stated,  and  without  regard  to  any  theory, 
the  question  of  popular  ballads  amounts  to  this:  at 
their  best,  they  were  sung  and  transmitted  from  gen- 
eration to  generation  by  people  who  were  mainly  of  the 
absolutely  unlettered  class,  who  neither  read  anything 
nor  wrote  anything,  and  who  were  demonstrably,  as 
well,  the  makers  and  transmitters  of  those  chorals  and 
refrains  and  improvisations  which  everybody  concedes 
to  popular  origin.  On  the  other  hand,  a  good  popular 
ballad  differs  from  these  refrains  and  improvised  stanzas 
in  that  it  has  coherence  in  structure,  definite  contents, 
and  what  is  surely  an  aesthetic  if  not  a  literary  appeal. 
Either,  then,  the  ballad,  which  carries  such  popular 
elements  as  the  refrain  or  chorus  and  those  peculiari- 
ties of  structure  which  we  shall  presently  examine  in 
detail,  is  originally  a  product  of  the  people  under  condi- 
tions of  improvisation  and  choral  dance,  but  ennobled 
and  enriched  on  its  traditional  course  in  such  a  way  as  to 
endow  it  with  something  of  the  dignity  of  art;    or  else 


THE  REAL  BALLAD  QUESTION  29 

it  is  originally  a  poem,  made  like  any  other  poem,  but 
submitted  by  tradition  to  influences  which  give  it  a 
"popular"  character.  It  is  either  the  choice  and  glory  1 
of  wild  flowers  or  a  degenerate  of  the  garden.  Each  of  •' 
these  explanations  of  the  ballad  is  reasonable  in  itself, 
and  does  not  conflict  with  common  sense.  One  of  them 
must  be  right,  the  other  wrong.  If  the  former  is  right,  the 
present  book  can  deal  with  a  definite  subject  and  be 
based  upon  compact  and  complete  material,  —  the  col- 
lection of  Professor  Child.  If  the  second  explanation 
is  right,  all  boundaries  of  the  subject  are  obscured,  the 
material  is  questionable,  and  a  haze  at  once  fills  the 
air,  that  haze  to  which  we  are  accustomed  in  "Thoughts 
on  Poetry"  and  kindred  works  of  great  amiability  and 
scope.  Decision  of  this  question,  therefore,  is  not  merely 
a  pedantic  or  academic  affair;  it  is  vital,  inevitable.  For 
reaching  a  decision,  two  plain  lines  of  inquiry  are  indi- 
cated. It  is  in  order  to  study  the  ballad  itself,  to  get  an 
accurate  idea  of  its  elements  in  all  their  bearings,  and 
to  determine  whether  these  are  to  be  referred,  as  older 
critics  would  put  it,  to  nature  or  to  art,  to  the  people  or 
to  the  poet.  It  is  also  in  order  to  study  the  actual  ballads, 
muster  them  in  every  way,  and  find  out  what  they  reveal 
in  regard  to  their  sources. 

If,  indeed,  this  revelation  of  sources  were  complete, 
if  the  ballads  of  Europe  could  be  followed  as  individ- 
ual poems  back  through  all  their  changes  to  their  original 
form,  the  ballad  question  would  be  solved  at  once;  but 
the  bridge  is  broken,  and  connection  must  be  made  in 


30  THE    BALLAD 

some  other  way.    To  begin  with,  the  medium  of  trans- 
mission is  an  uncertain   one  at  best,  —  oral  tradition, 
seldom  reduced  to  written  record.    Again,  ballads  as  a 
body,  and  in  the  shape  in  which  they  now  lie  before  us, 
go  back  through  the  fifteenth  century;    and  there  they 
cease.     Older  and  lost  versions,  to  be  sure,  are  easily 
traced  through  the  thirteenth  century.    The  Robin  Hood 
cycle  must  have  been  forming  then;    and  another  cycle, 
bracketed  with  the  greenwood  ballads  by  the  author  of 
"Piers  Plowman,"  celebrated  the  deeds  of  one  of  the 
last  great  feudal  lords,  Randolph,  Earl  of  Chester,  but 
has  been  totally  lost.    Analogy  tempts  us  to  conceive  the 
songs  about  Hereward  to  have  been  ballads  of  the  same 
tfype;    so  that  it  is  usual  to  speak  of  English  ballads  as 
irunning  back  to  the  Conquest,  as  well  as  to  believe  that 
/the  ancestors  of  men  who  sung  their  Hereward  and  their 
Randolph  must  have  had,  before  the  Conquest,  in  spite 
of  changed  conditions  in  speech  and  verse,  something 
not  unlike  the  ballad  beloved  of  the  sons.    But  all  this 
is  in  the  realm  of  conjecture,   however  plausible  and 
right  conjecture  may  seem  to  be.     As  actual  material, 
f  ballads  are  n^io  be  found  in  any  number  in  England 
before   the  fifteenth   century.      Thence   come   the   best 
Robin   Hood   versions.      The   Percy   folio   manuscript, 
written  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and  oral  tradition  in 
Scotland  for  the  past  hundred  and  fifty  years,  will  ac- 
count for  nearly  all  the  rest  of  the  collection.    These  are 
the  actual  ballads;   and  with  one  insignificant  exception, 
nothing  of  the  same  kind,  nothing  resembling  them  in 


CONDITIONS  OF  SURVIVAL  31 

structure,  metrical  form,  and  style,  can  be  found  in 
earlier  records.^  The  doors  of  a  medieval  library  were 
shut  inexorably  upon  the  popular  muse;  poetry  was  a 
part  of  "grammar;"  traditional  song  lived  and  died  with 
the  humble  generations  whom  it  consoled. 

It  is  clear,  then,  why  ballads  cannot  be  found  upon 
the  literary  record  before  this  time;  but,  since  they  belong 
in  any  case  rather  to  oral  tradition  than  to  script  or 
print,  one  asks  why  a  tenacious  popular  memory,  re- 
gardless of  records,  does  not  stretch  beyond  that  baffling 
period  of  literary  readjustments  well  into  the  traditions 
of  medieval  Europe.  Again,  there  is  a  plain  and  con- 
vincing reply.  Poetry  made  in  the  vernacular,  and  orally 
transmitted,  depends  for  its  preservation  upon  such  lin- 
guistic stability  as  will  enable  it  to  pass  from  generation 
to  generation  without  the  changes  of  word  and  form 
that  make  it  both  unintelligible  as  language  and  impos- 
sible as  verse.  Such  linguistic  stability  begins  about  the 
time  when  we  date  our  oldest  English  ballads;  both^ 
Barbour  and  the  author  of  "Piers  Plowman"  mentio 
them  in  the  fourteenth  century,  and  the  versions  which 
have  come  down  to  us  are  only  a  little  later  in  origin. 
Moreover,  though  this  subject  is  extremely  difficult, 
the  naming  of  "Piers  Plowman"  reminds  us  that  with 
the  early  fifteenth  century,  and  in  the  face  of  a  most 

^  As  paper  came  to  be  used  for  manuscripts,  popular  verses  stood  a 
better  chance  of  record.  Such  random  stuff  as  sailors'  cries  and  other 
popular  rimes  is  found  in  the  Trinity  Coll.  MS.  R.  3, 19,  which  is  paper, 
and  dates  from  Henry  VI's  reign.  See  Wright  and  Halliwell's  Reliquiae 
Antiquae,  i,  2  flf. 


32  THE   BALLAD 

remarkable  popular  revival  of  the  old  Germanic  rhythm, 
English  prosody  was  nevertheless  settling  into  the  system 
which  has  obtained  in  all  our  modern  verse.  It  is  hard, 
so  far  as  metres  are  concerned,  to  make  an  equation 
between  Chaucer's  fling  at  rom-ram-ruf  and  the  "Piers 
Plowman"  fling  at  "rimes  of  Robin  Hood;"  but  the 
"rimes  of  Robin  Hood  "  were  there,  they  were  in  the  new 
metres,  and  they  prevailed. 

The  bridge  is  broken,  then,  between  our  popular 
ballads  and  their  supposed  medieval  representatives;  but 
can  we  not  mend  the  bridge,  or  rather,  can  we  not  recog- 
nize the  lost  planks  and  piers  as  they  have  been  used 
again  in  another  and  still  existing  structure  ?  One  is  con- 
stantly hearing  of  ballads  as  the  basis  of  many  a  medieval 
record,  as  the  source  of  many  a  medieval  poem.  Obliging 
hands  have  even  "  restored  "  these  ballads  by  a  few  simple 
dissections,  excisions,  insertions,  combinations,  infer- 
ences, conjectures,  and  appeals  to  the  open  mind.  From 
this  restored  material  to  the  collections  of  modern  days 
is  an  easy  leap,  —  provided  one  takes  the  restored  ma- 
terial on  trust.  But  this  is  precisely  what  one  must  not 
do.  There  is  no  objection,  to  be  sure,  in  calling  much  of 
this  older  and  mainly  inferred  poetry  by  the  general 
name  of  ballad ;  but  in  very  few  cases  is  it  clear  what  the 
ballad  really  was  in  terms  of  its  structure  and  its  origin. 
ITraditional  ballads  are  obviously  and  absolutely  difter- 
/ent  from  those  songs  made  by  the  professional  minstrel, 
)  mainly  for  a  political  end,  some  of  which  have  survived 
from  the  twelfth  century  in  England;   these  were  ephe- 


TOPICAL  AND  CHRONICLE   "BALLADS"      33 

meral,  popular  in  the  sense  of  the  Limburger  Chronicle 
when  it  records  sundry  songs  as  "sung  this  year"  by 
the  German  people  and  hurried  into  oblivion  along  with 
the  excitement  or  passing  interest  which  they  served. 
What  was  "sung  this  year"  is  exactly  opposite  to  what 
the  folk  have  sung  steadily  through  a  long  series  of  years. 
Political  songs,  rimes  of  the  moment  upon  whatever 
topic  attracts  popular  attention,  cannot  pass  as  traditional 
ballads.  Moreover,  the  uniformity  of  the  Middle  Ages 
must  not  be  pushed  too  far;  there  was  a  diversity  of 
talent  as  well  as  a  variety  of  product;  and  when  a  song 
or  a  ballad,  otherwise  unknown,  is  mentioned,  its  nature 
is  not  lightly  to  be  assumed. 

Still  less  confidence  is  in  order  for  cases  where  one 
suspects  a  "ballad"  to  be  lurking  behind  some  metrical 
portion  of  the  old  chronicles  or  some  particularly  vivid 
piece  of  narrative,  or  some  event  embedded  in  the  pop- 
ular epic.  It  is  well  known  that  the  brief  notices  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  Chronicle  are  broken  for  the  year  755  by  a 
most  dramatic  and  detailed  story ,  recognized  by  Ten  Brink 
as  a  later  interpolation  and  claimed  as  the  summary  in 
prose  of  "an  English  lay."  It  is  good  ballad  stuff,  no 
doubt;  but  no  ballad  style  or  structure,  no  hint  of  rhythm 
or  repetition  or  refrain,  is  left;  and  one  is  rather  reminded 
of  the  swift,  relentless  narrative  pace,  if  not  of  the  ar- 
tistic perfection,  in  an  Icelandic  saga.  The  actual  poetry 
of  the  Chronicle,  moreover,  as  we  shall  presently  see, 
though  it  has  been  sundered  into  "learned"  and  "popu- 
lar" classes,  has  absolutely  nothing  in  it  which  can  be 


34  THE   BALLAD 

compared  with  traditional  ballads,  —  the  "popular" 
poem  on  the  death  of  Edgar  for  an  example.  One  hears 
of  Alfred's  love  for  "Saxon"  poetry,  and  of  Dunstan's 
preference  —  an  enemy  charged  him  with  it  —  for 
avitae  gentilitatis  vanissima  carmina  et  historiarum  fri- 
volas  .  .  .  incantaiionum  naenias:  but  what  were  they? 
"Heathen  popular  songs,"  saith  mine  author;  but  the 
answer  is  not  definite  for  ballad  purposes.  Absolutely 
no  Anglo-Saxon  verse  which  has  come  down  shows  a 
shred  of  structural  and  formal  identity  with  the  actual 
ballads;  there  is  no  strophic  division,  no  refrain,  save 
in  the  song  of  Deor,  —  and  that  pretty  lyric  denies  bal- 
ladry in  every  syllable.  Something  like  the  ballad,  it  has 
been  said  above,  our  ancestors  must  have  had;  but 
nothing  can  be  restored  and  little  can  be  guessed.  Cer- 
tainly neither  "  Maldon  Fight"  nor  a  poem  from  the 
Chronicle  like  "Brunanburh"  can  pass  as  a  traditional 
ballad.  Immediate  as  an  echo,  self-conscious,  the  latter 
is  a  summary  and  challenge  of  English  patriotism,  sung 
from  a  watch-tower.  They  are  both  made  on  the  epic 
pattern  dominant  everywhere  in  Anglo-Saxon  verse;  and, 
indeed,  the  uniform  style  and  the  slight  differences  in 
metrical  form  which  all  that  poetry  reveals  make  one  of 
the  marvels  of  literature.  Such  a  lyrical  subject  as  "The 
Wife's  Complaint,"  for  instance,  should  lend  itself  ad- 
mirably to  the  ballad  style,  and  ought  to  differ  structur- 
ally from  epic;  but  how  traditionally^£ic  are  its  phrases, 
how  sophisticated  its  variations  and  metaphors,  how 
intricate  and  interlaced  its  stichic  verses,  and  how  remote 


NO  ANGLO-SAXON  BALLADS  35 

it  is  from  actual  singing,  compared  with  the  simplicity  of 
style,  the  choral  suggestion  of  structure,  the  repetitions, 
and  the  irresistible  lilt,  in  a  real  traditional  ballad  of  later 
time  but  similar  theme !  In  the  first  case  a  banished  wife 
says  that  while  many  happy  lovers  throughout  the  world 
are  still  locked  in  embraces,  she  must  go  at  daybreak  — 

"  Under  the  oak  to  the  earth-caves  lone, 
'There  must  I  sit  the  summer-long  day, 
there  must  I  weep  my  weary  exile, 
my  need  and  misery.    Nevermore 
shall  I  cease  from  the  sorrow  my  soul  endureth, 
from  all  the  longing  this  life  has  brought  me  ! ' " 

She  gives  a  romantic  touch  to  her  landscape,  which  is 
as  dreary  as  that  of  Mariana  in  the  moated  grange:  — 

'"Dim  are  the  dales,  the  dunes  are  high, 
bitter  my  burgwalls,'  briar-covered, 
joyless  my  dwelling.' " 

Contrast  with  this  the  ballad,^  later  of  record  by  nearly 
a  thousand  years,  where  a  mother  has  been  "carried  off, 
four  days  after  bearing  a  son,  to  serve  as  nurse  in  the 
elf-queen's  family." 

" '  I  heard  a  cow  low,  a  bonnie  cow  low, 
An'  a  cow  low  down  in  yon  glen; 
Lang,  lang  will  my  young  son  greet 
Or  his  mither  bid  him  come  ben. 

" '  I  heard  a  cow  low,  a  bonnie  cow  low. 
An'  a  cow  low  down  in  yon  fauld; 
Lang,  lang  will  my  young  son  greet 
Or  his  mither  take  him  jrae  cauld.' " 

*  "Citadel-hedges,"  what  should  be  her  "  castle  walls." 
^  Child,  no.  40,  The  Queen  of  Elfans  Nourice. 


36  THE    BALLAD 

Let  the  lyrics  go,  we  are  told;  surely  there  are  ballads 
in  the  national  epic  itself,  and  surely  they  stretch  through 
our  old  colonial  or  heathen  literature  back  in  majestic 
line  to  the  chants  about  Arminius  and  the  rout  of  Roman 
legions  in  the  forest  of  the  fatherland.  True,  we  have 
no  continuity  of  heroes,  as  with  Scandinavian  Sigurds 
and  Brynhilds,^  from  late  ballads  back  to  early  epic;  but 
the  break  is  easy  to  explain.  What  cannot  be  explained 
is  the  exact  nature  of  those  "ballads"  which  doubtless 
served  as  basis  for  the  epic  in  both  Scandinavian  and 
English,  of  those  cantilenae,  songs  called  by  whatever 
name,  which  once  carried  the  tale  of  legendary  Beowulf, 
developed  the  myth  of  Sigurd,  and  spread  far  and  wide 
the  deeds  of  historical  Charlemagne.  How  is  one  to  make 
a  precise  statement  about  them  and  connect  them,  for 
purposes  of  poetic  classification,  with  that  actual  mass 
of  ballads,  wonderfully  uniform  in  structure  and  style, 
which  make  up  the  later  Germanic  group,  —  English, 
Scottish,  Scandinavian,  German  ?  Something,  surely, 
can  be  confidently  said  about  the  older  songs.  "It  is 
probable,"  says  Gaston  Paris, ^  "that  the  verses  were 
grouped  in  stanzas,  and  were  alliterative  with  the  Ger- 
mans, assonant  for  the  Romance."  They  had  the  refrain, 
and  were  so  far  choral.   They  fall  into  tw^o  chronological 

'  Professor  Ker  calls  The  Winning  of  Thor's  Hammer  a  ballad 
as  it  stands.  Epic  and  Romance,  p.  130.  See,  however,  his  distinc- 
tion between  epic  and  ballad,  as  a  difference  in  kind  due  to  style, 
pp.  147  ff. 

^  His  results  still  hold  with  little  change  from  later  criticism.  See 
Romania,  xiii,  603,  617;  Histoire  Poetique  de  C'harl.,  pp.  11,  21,  48,  69. 


SURVIVALS  OF  IMPROVISATION   IN   EPIC       37 

classes:  first  comes  the  rude jiantilena.  flourishing  from 
'the  seventh  to  the  tenth  century,  "  improvised,  and  con^ 
temporafy  with  the  facts,"  made  by  warriors  and  sung 
by., warriors  about  their  own  deeds.  Anglo-Saxon  and 
^arlier  Germanic  fighting  men,  thinks  Gaston  Paris,  had 
•  at^^rst  no  class  of  minstrels  to  sing  for  them;  every 
mf*!?  «ouU  improvise  and  sing  his  own  verses.  The 
second  pejjod  is  that  of  the  professional  poet,  the  jongleur ^ 
minstrel,  court  bard,  who  worked  up  the  old  material 
into  coherent  and  protracted  lays.  On  this  foundation 
rested  the  later  epic;  and  it  is  not  hard  even  in  the  third 
stage  to  recover  many  a  hint  of  the  first.  Survivals  of 
the  old  warrior  improvisations  are  to  be  found,  with  little 
change  due  to  an  epic  setting,  in  Roland's  famous  speech, 
with  the  refrain  remnant  at  its  close,  inciting  his  com- 
rades to  play  the  man,  show  no  fear,  give  no  occasion 
for  reproachful  and  scandalous  songs  on  their  cowardice, 
and  above  all  to  bide  faithful  to  their  lord  the  king;  in 
the  cry  of  the  Saxon  warrior  at  Maldon,  true  to  his  dead 
chieftain,  as  to  the  old  Germanic  strain;  in  the  appeal  of 
repentant  Wiglaf  in  the  Beowulf.  Doubtless  all  these 
might  be  traced  back  to  the  improvised  boast-song  of 
the  Germanic  clansman  in  hall  or  camp,  at  the  feast 
before  the  fight,  with  a  refrain  of  his  comrades,  truci 
cantu,  as  Tacitus  calls  it,  a  wild  choral  ringing  through 
woods  and  hills  to  the  amazement  of  the  silent  Roman 
legions.  A  distant  and  confused  echo  of  this  warrior  im- 
provisation may  even  linger  in  balladry,  as  when  Johnny 
Armstrong  calls  to  his  men, — 


38  THE    BALLAD 

"  Saying,  '  Fight  on,  my  merry  men  all, 
I  am  a  little  hurt,  but  I  am  not  slain; 
I  will  lay  me  down  for  to  bleed  a  while. 

Then  I  '11  rise  and  fight  with  you  again,'  "  — 

or  when  the  Percy  and  the  Douglas  pledge  their  word 
for  a  battle  to  the  death.  This  is  legitimate  conjecture; 
but  it  is  no  proof  of  identity  as  to  old  song  and  later  bal- 
lad. Occasion,  subject,  spirit,  may  be  alike;  but  what 
of  structure, style,  and  poetical  form  ?  Tradition,  again,  is 
a  prime  factor  in  ballads;  it  chooses  and  moulds  its  ma- 
terial in  its  own  way.  The  battle  is  over,  the  captains  and 
the  kings  depart,  and  the  very  shouting  of  the  warriors' 
chorus  dies  away;  reminiscent,  not  too  sure  of  details 
even  while  it  adds  them,  tradition  sings  the  fight  cen- 
turies later  in  no  dramatic  and  immediate  style.  "Old 
men,"  says  the  "Cheviot"  ballad, — 

"  Old  men  that  knowen  the  grownde  well  yenoughe, 
Call  it  the  battell  of  Otterburn,"  — 

and  it  is  probable  that  both  the  famous  ballads,  different 
as  they  are,  describe  one  and  the  same  event.  Professor 
Child  thinks  that  Sheale's  copy  of  1559,  or  thereabouts, 
is  much  more  modern  than  "the  rude  and  ancient  form" 
of  the"  Cheviot"  which  Sidney  heard,  a  decade  or  so  later, 
sung  by  the  "blind  crowder"  of  his  famous  avowal.  If 
this  is  the  work  of  tradition  between  the  actual  making 
of  a  ballad  like  the  "  Cheviot,"  as  it  must  have  been  sung 
immediately  after  the  fight,  and  its  estate  at  the  time  of 
Sheale's  record,  or  between  the  "Cheviot"  and  "Otter- 
burn,"  what  is  one  to  say  of  analogies  between  our  popu- 


THE   BEOWULF  NOT  POPULAR  39 

lar,  traditional  ballads  and  the  old  sources  of  the  chanson 
de  geste  ?  How  much  was  left  of  warriors'  improvisations 
and  choral  in  the  "ballad"  that  served  as  stock-in-trade 
for  the  gleemen  of  Germanic  days;  and  how  much  was 
left  of  this  ballad  when  the  poet  of  the  epic  had  wrought 
it  over  in  a  process  not  far  removed  from  modern  poetic 
composition?  For  the  Beowulf  is  surely  the  deliber- 
ate work  of  a  poet;  its  art  is  far  higher  than  the  art  of 
that  epic  in  embryo  made  five  or  six  centuries  later  by 
some  humble  rhapsode  from  the  ballads  of  Robin  Hood, 
Anglo-Saxon  poetry,  Anglo-Saxon  speech,  were  of  a 
more  elaborate  type  than  the  Norman  ;  ^  and  the  rude 
lay  of  warriors  was  already  prehistoric,  or  almost  so, 
for  the  best  period  of  our  early  colonial  literature.  Dif-- 
ference  in  structure  and  rhythm,  a  strange  tongue,  and 
the  intervening  waste  of  years  have  all  combined  to  make 
Anglo-Saxon  poetry  seem  the  rude  product  of  a  rude 
folk.  A  vivacious  English  scholar  not  long  ago  described 
his  ancestors  as  "  stuffing  their  bellies  with  acorns," 
and  singing  lays  that  accorded  with  the  diet.  Gurth 
does  not  count,  though  he  was  surely  as  intelligent  as  any 
Norman  hireling;  but  one  suspects  that  Cedric's  fore- 
bears were  superior  in  literary  taste  to  the  Front-de 
Boeufs  and  even  the  Bracys  of  an  earlier  day.  Anglo- 
Saxon  poetry  asked  a  fairly  intelligent  listener,  and  it 
was  the  work,  even  in  what  we  call  popular  epic,  of  an 
artist,  a  poet.  Long  before  the  Beowulf  of  our  version, 
there  must  have  existed  on  the  Continent,  among  groups 
^  Greenough  and  Kittredge,  Words  and  tlieir  Ways,  p.  84. 


40  THE    BALLAD 

of  kindred  tribes  whose  speech  would  show  some  diver- 
gence, a  common  poetic  dialect,  the  language  of  wander- 
ing minstrels  and  of  all  that  intertribal  journalism  which 
can  be  inferred  from  a  Widsith.  In  this  poetic  dialect, 
perhaps  most  developed  after  England  had  become  the 
intellectual  clearing-house  of  Greater  Germania,  mate- 
rial of  all  sorts  could  have  been  fused,  and  themes  and 
styles  could  have  been  exchanged,  somewhat  as  in  the 
latyn  corupt  or  corumjms  ^  of  the  thirteenth  century 
minstrels  and  traveling  folk  must  have  passed  the  lit- 
erary time  of  day. 

The  point  is  that  from  cantilenae  to  epics  like  the 
Beowulf,  from  warrior  improvisation  to  court  composi- 
tion, the  process  is  open,  central,  and,  to  a  large  extent, 
official.  It  was  on  the  highway  of  what  then  counted 
as  literature.  It  excluded  that  long  tradition  which  loves 
the  bypaths  and  has  nothing  to  do  with  court,  army,  the 
stir  of  national  life.  Precisely  here  the  analogy  breaks 
down  which  would  range  the  ballad  of  oral,  communal, 
unsophisticated  tradition  with  such  warrior  lays  as 
formed  the  basis  of  the  Beowulf.  Fortunately  a  passage 
in  our  old  epic  tells  us  ^  precisely  how  such  songs  of  the 
fighting  man  and  the  aristocratic  gleeman  were  made. 
Jocund  riders,  coming  back  from  the  scene  of  a  notable 
fight,  produce  a  lay  which  is  indeed  improvised,  but  which 

'  See  Fulk  Fitz  Warine,  Warton  Club,  1855,  pp.  127,  168,  and 
Wright's  note. 

^  See  w.  865  ff.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  word  gilphlceden  is  not 
strained  in  the  interpretation. 


WARRIOR  IMPROVISATION  NOT  BALLADRY    41 

draws  upon  Germanic  legendary  verse  for  a  setting  and 
for  an  edifying  contrast  of  character.  A  king's  thane,  a 
warrior,  who  "has  taken  part  in  many  a  poetic  contest," 
and  is  "skillful  in  improvisation,"  who  furthermore  is 
"  mindful  of  songs,"  has  a  stock  of  phrases  at  command, 
and  "holds  in  memory  a  mass  of  old  sagas,"  of  tradi- 
tion, "  finds  fresh  words  "  and  makes  a  new  story  "  based 
on  the  new  facts."  And  thus  "the  warrior  cleverly 
repeated  the  adventure  of  Beowulf,  and  successfully 
told  the  story,  linking  word  with  word."  So  the  process 
is  described,  and  as  no  strange  one.  It  must  have  been 
a  general  habit  and  a  common  source  of  heroic  song; 
events  passed  by  improvisation  immediately  into  verse, 
but  by  the  aid  of  skilled  and  fairly  noble  singers.  Iil- 
the  passage  just  quoted,  other  song  follows  the  lay  of 
Beowulf  and  Grendel;  conforming  to  that  love  of  types 
so  prominent  in  Germanic  verse,  and  to  a  Platonic,  not 
Aristotelian,  idea  of  morals  in  poetry,  the  singer  in 
eulogy  of  his  hero  goes  on  to  compare  Sigemund  for 
virtue,  and  to  contrast  Heremod  for  vice, — figures  fa- 
mous in  Germanic  tradition  which  do  not  concern  us 
here.  The  introduction  of  them  shows  the  epic  poet's 
reflective  tendency;  he  must  allude  and  suggest  rather 
thaJoTTalTate^ ■  his  historical,  ethical,  and  comparative  in- 
stincts are  utterly  alien  to  any  popular  ballad.  What  we 
learn  from  him  is  the  formula  of  improvisation  and  tra- 
dition, by  fighting-men  of  r^nk  or  by  actual  court-poets, 
in  the  making  of  such  songs  as  served  for  source  of 
his  epic.    These  two  classes  are  on  the  same  plane  in  the 


42  THE    BALLAD 

Beowulf  perspective.^  Improvisation  and  tradition,  to 
be  sure,  is  also  the  ballad  formula;  but  a  gulf  is  fixed 
between  song  and  ballad  even  wider  than  the  distance 
between  a  remote  village  fisherman  and  an  international 
hero.  This  gulf,  moreover,  is  quite  as  formidable  with 
regard  to  style  and  structure.  We  shall  presently  see  that 
the  main  structural  feature  of  popular  ballads  is  simple 
repetition  with  incremental  changes,  utterly  void  of 
metaphor,  which  advance  the  statement  of  fact,  and  help 
the  narrative,  however  slowly,  on  its  way.  The  main 
characteristic  of  "literary"  Germanic,  and  particularly 
of  Anglo-Saxon,  poetic  structure  is  crossed  and  broken 
repetition  with  variation,  which  emphasizes  only  the 
previous  fact  by  the  use  of  kennings,  or  striking  meta- 
'  phor,  but  does  not  advance  the  story.  Springing  from 
the  same  primitive  source  of  exact  verbal  repetition  in 
chorus,  the  art  of  the  epic  and  the  art  of  the  ballad  have 
taken  widely  sundered  courses,  and  the  divergence  was 
marked  enough  at  the  dawn  of  Germanic  history.  For 
Anglo-Saxon  times  the  actual  writing  of  epics  had  in- 
fluenced narrative  art;  epic  repetition,  or  summary, 
condenses,  whereas  ballad  repetition,  oral  in  its  record, 
repeats  literally  and  at  length.  To  sum  the  case,  Anglo- 
Saxon  epic,  in  its  didactic  vein,  its  reflective  tendency,  its 
comment  on  the  action,  its  consciously  pathetic  tone,  its 
attitude  towards  nature,  its  control  of  material  and  cor- 


1  That  our  court-poets,  like  jongleurs  in  France,  revised  and  com-- 
bined  songs  made  by  the  warriors  themselves  (see  G.  Paris.  Hist.  Poet, 
de  Chad.,  p.  121),  is  probable  enough.  It  is  mainly  professional  songs 
that  get  on  record. 


EPIC   AND   BALLAD  43 

relation  of  parts,  its  organic  conception,  its  descriptive 
j)Ower,  as  well  as  irr  its -reliance  on  the  lays  of  song- 
loving  warriors  and  courtly  bards,  was  so  far  from  primi- 
tive methods  of  the  old  choral  throng,  so  alien  to  the 
ways  of  tradition,  that  even  a  Beowulf  can  do  nothing 
for  those  who  would  trace  English  popular  ballads  to 
their  source.^  Woden  and  his  runes  had  long  reigned 
over  the  world  even  of  earliest  Beowulf  material;  to 
find  the  forerunner  of  the  traditional  ballad,  one  would 
have  to  track  old  Norse  Thor  to  his  hiding-place,  a 
banished  god,  and  would  have  to  discover  a  forgotten 
mass  of  choral  and  homely  verse.  Can  this  be  done? 
Can  we  connect  our  individual  ballads  as  they  lie  before 
us  with  the  old  communal  song  of  medieval  Europe? 

This,  too,  is  an  impossible  achievement.  Of  course, 
those  old  songs  and  refrains  of  the  people  did  not  die 
with  the  occasion  which  called  them  forth.  They  not 
only  lived  in  tradition,  but  sprang  up  with  every  need  of 
the  daily  round  of  life.  Unwritten,  just  as  ordinary  ex- 
perience is  unwritten,  they  filled  with  song  and  dance 
the  whole  festal  year.  The  ritual  of  a  hundred  super- 
stitions, ignored  by  the  great,  added  to  this  store  of  rude 

'  The  repetitions  of  a  message,  or  the  like,  are  more  artistic  in  the 
Beowulf,  more  varied,  than  one  would  expect.  In  the  fifteenth  book 
of  the  Iliad,  on  the  other  hand.  Iris  delivers  to  Poseidon  almost  liter- 
ally the  message  of  Zeus.  So  in  the  ballads  ;  for  example,  in  Child 
Maurice.  Contrast  Wulfgar's  cleverly  paraphrased  report  of  Beowulfs 
message  to  Hrothgar,  w.  340  fl.  This  constant  artistic  effort  after  pic- 
turesque variation  is  quite  above  the  ballad  reach,  and  demands,  like 
the  kindred  "thought-rime"  in  Hebrew  poetry,  intellectual  effort  on 
the  part  of  the  hearer. 


44  THE    BALLAD 

and  choral  verse.  In  a  sense  now  totally  unfamiliar, 
song  resounded  through  the  whole  communal  life;  and 
all  life,  apart  from  court  and  camp,  was  of  this  simple, 
homogeneous,  communal  kind.  <The  choral  and  com- 
munal song  of  the  Middle  Ages  was  undoubtedly  the 
J  ultimate  source  of  our  ballad  as  a  poetic  species;  (and 
yet  it  is  impossible  to  seize  upon  any  one  phase  of^that 
old  poetry  and  connect  actual  ballad  with  actual  choral 
verse.  There  were  many  kinds  of  choral  verse,  as  one 
can  tell  in  general  from  medieval  allusions  as  well  as 
in  particular  from  the  variety  of  old  English  compounds 
with  the  words  leo^,  lay,  and  lac,  game,  dance,  ritual. 
On  every  side  we  hear  tantalizing  echoes  of  these  chorals 
from  men  and  women,  from  high  and  low  estate,  from 
camp,  from  the  conventional  garden  where  aristocratic 
folk  amuse  themselves,  from  the "'  ladies  foure  and  twenty, 
and  yet  mo,"  whom  the  wife  of  Bath's  knight  saw  danc- 
ing by  the  forest,  or  other  four  and  twenty  ladies  playing 
ball  with  song  and  graceful  steps,  from  the  village,  from 
the  church  itself,  from  old  pagan  holy  places  new  sancti- 
fied by  episcopal  benediction.  But  no  one  can  or  will 
tell  us  what  they  sing;  at  best,  as  we  shall  see,  the  infor- 
mation is  misleading  or  vague. 

There  were  chorals  of  war.  Germanic  warriors  rushed 
into  fight  singing  refrains  to  their  gods  of  battle;  and 
doubtless  their  sons  on  English  soil  did  the  same  thing. 
The  repeated  cries  seem  to  have  carried  sense  and  to 
have  excited  the  singers  by  something  more  than  mere 
noise.      Ammianus  Marcellinus   says   that   the   Goths, 


GAP  BETWEEN  CHORAL  AND  BALLAD       45 

hurrying  into  battle,  "  with  discordant  noise  sang  (stride- 
bant)  the  praises  of  their  ancestors;"  and  when  Taillefer 
chanted  his  solo  at  Hastings,  there  was  no  doubt  a  good 
chorus  to  back  him,  as  well  as  a  right  Saxon  refrain  to 
greet  him  with  defiance,  however  hoarse  Saxon  throats 
must  have  been  after  the  treper,  e  saillir  e  chanter,  as 
Wace  recounts  it,  of  the  night  before.  Hymns,  too,  were 
choral,  with  a  dramatic  dance.  Songs  and  dances^of  the 
May  go  back  to  immemorial  ritual  and  ceremonies  in 
worship  of  Nature  and  the  revival  of  her  powers  at  the 
springtime;  a  Russian  scholar,  who  has  studied  the 
ritualistic  songs  of  his  race,  comes  to  a  theory  of  poetic 
origins  embraced  in  the  formula  of  "ceremony  to  song, 
song  to  poetry."  ^  It  has  been  maintained,  furthermore, 
that  the  primitive  German  hymn  was  like  that  song  of 
the  Arval  Brothers  in  Rome,  —  cries  to  the  god  in  repe- 
tition and  refrain  sung  by  a  dancing  throng.  Chorals  of 
labor,  too,  rise  everywhere  in  medieval  life,  and  still 
exist  in  survival.  In  fact,  nearly  all  emotional  expression 
was  once  public  and  concerted  in  its  utterance,  and  loved 
the  rhythmic  fall  of  feet  as  well  as  of  voice;  but  the 
obviousness  and  range  of  this  rude  song  forbade  its 
preservation  except  in  the  traditional  way.  Of  bridal 
and  funeral  songs,  originally  bound  up  with  the  dance, 
there  is  evidence  of  every  sort;   but  actual  record  occurs 

1  Anichkof,  as  reported  by  Dr.  Arthur  Beatty  in  his  valuable  study 
of  the  St.  George  Plays,  in  Trans.  Wisconsin  Acad.  Sciences,  Arts  and 
Letters,  xv,  11,  October,  1906.  See  also  J.  G.  Frazer,  Lectures  on  the 
Early  History  of  Kingship,  1905,  pp.  164,  178;  and  E.  K.  Chambers, 
The  MedioBval  Stage,  vol.  i. 


46  THE    BALLAD 

only  in  cases  where  the  accompHshed  warrior-poet  or 
the  professional  minstrel  was  concerned.  Young  men, 
the  flower  of  their  clan,  rode  round  the  tomb  of  Beowulf, 
chanting  his  praises;  and  the  strikingly  dignified  con- 
clusion of  our  epic  echoes  their  very  words.  Of  a  similar 
song  chanted  by  warriors  of  Attila,  but  quite  in  the 
Gothic  manner,  we  have  a  Latin  paraphrase.  But  this 
is  no  choral  and  communal  song;  again,  we  have  to 
think  of  a  Widsith  or  a  Deor,  or  rather,  in  these  cases, 
of  song-skilled  warriors  like  him  of  Hrothgar's  court, 
who  chanted  the  fight  with  Grendel.  Contrast  the  ac- 
count given  by  Jordanis  ^  of  another  royal  death  and 
funeral  song,  where  soldiers  bore  their  slain  chieftain 
from  the  fight.  "Then  one  could  see  the  Gothic  squad- 
rons, even  amid  the  rage  and  rush  of  battle,  showing 
the  last  honors  to  their  king,  and  singing  Avith  inhar- 
monious ^  voices  their  songs  of  grief."  With  which,  now, 
of  these  funeral  songs,  the  sonorous,  stately  praise  or  the 
wild  choral  wailings,  are  we  to  connect  later  ballads  of 
grief  like  "Bonnie  James  Campbell"  and  the  rest?  The 
ansAver  is  prompt  enough.  So  far  as  the  evidence  goes, 
with  neither  of  them.  In  the  one  case,  style,  structure, 
manner,  differ  absolutely  from  the  style  and  structure  of 
the  ballad.    In  the  other  case,  we  have  no  record. 

The  festal  year,  too,  was  full  of  choral  song;  and  here 
one  assumes,  with  great  show  of  truth,  the  origins  of 

'  The  two  accounts  are  respectively  in  chaps.  x!i  and  xlix. 

^  Doubtless  Jordanis  means  by  this  word  what  Julian  meant  in  his 
contemptuous  account  of  Germanic  songs;  it  is  the  rude  but  rhythmic 
choral  of  a  throng. 


CHORAL  AND   LYRIC  47 

the  older  ballad.  But  in  what  one  recorded  case?  High- 
born folk  loved  the  carole,  and  sang  as  they  danced; 
many  a  picture  in  the  old  manuscripts  shows  them  at 
their  play,  and  Gawin  Douglas  ^  gives  us  a  hint  of  what 
they  were  wont  to  sing :  — 

"  Sum  [sang]  ryng-sangis,  dansys  ledis,  and  roundis. 
With  vocis  schill,  quhill  all  the  dail  resoundis; 
Quharso  thai  walk  into  thar  carolyng. 
For  amorus  lays  doith  the  Rochys  ryng: 
Ane  sang,  '  the  schyp  salys  our  the  salt  faym, 
Will  bryng  thir  merchandis  and  my  lemman  haym;' 
Sum  other  syngis,  '  I  wil  be  blyth  and  lycht, 
Mine  hart  is  lent  upon  sa  gudly  wight.' " 

These  are  not  narrative  ballads;  one  thinks  rather  of 
an  origin  for  love-lyric,  and  of  that  scene  in  Chaucer's 
"Parlement  of  Foules"  where  a  roundel,  or  triolet,  is 
sung  to  Nature  in  a  "note"  which  Chaucer  describes  as 
"made  in  France."  The  ballade,  not  our  ballad,  had  its 
source  in  these  amorous  chorals;  although  both  own  the 
common  choral  feature  of  repetition  and  refrain.  Actual 
ballads  were  sung  by  the  "people"  themselves,  at  dance 
and  play;  witness  the  famous  passage  in  the  "Complaynt 
of  Scotland,"  contemporary  with  recorded  traditional 
ballads  which  it  names.  For  older  times  there  is  plenty 
of  general  information,  but  no  particular  fact  to  which 
one  can  link  a  ballad  of  the  collections.  Ballads  which 
dealt  with  prominent  persons  or  events  were  beyond  all 

1  Prologue  of  book  xii  of  the  iEneid,  193  ff.  To  lead  the  dance 
was  to  lead  the  singing,  as  the  foremiger  of  German  dances  testifies;  but 
this  was  a  later  stage  of  the  original  choral. 


48  THE    BALLAD 

question  made  in  the  choral  throng;  there  is  no  more 
venerable  fact  of  poetic  production.  "And  Miriam  the 
prophetess,  the  sister  of  Aaron,  took  a  timbrel  in  her 
hand;  and  all  the  women  went  out  after  her  with  tim- 
brels and  with  dances.  And  Miriam  answered  them, 
Sing  ye  to  the  Lord,  for  he  hath  triumphed  gloriously; 
the  horse  and  his  rider  hath  he  thrown  into  the  sea."  If 
one  objects  to  the  aristocratic  tinge,  the  high  rank,  in  this 
"ballad"  as  well  as  in  the  song  of  Jephthah's  daughter, 
one  can  turn  to  another  scene,  where  "it  came  to  pass 
.  .  .  when  David  returned  from  the  slaughter  of  the  Phi- 
listine, that  the  women  came  out  of  all  the  cities  of  Israel, 
singing  and  dancing,  to  meet  king  Saul  .  .  .And  the 
women  sang  one  to  another  in  their  play,  and  said, 
"  Saul  hath  slain  his  thousands, 
And  David  his  ten  thousands."  * 
There  is  popular  refrain;  and  the  narrative  improvisation 
can  be  inferred.  It  is  all  democratic  and  communal 
enough.  Like  these  women,  too,  Gothic  matrons  arid 
maidens  streamed  out  from  their  village  in  a  throng  to 
greet  Attila  with  songs,  dancing  the  while  and  waving 
their  uplifted  veils.  A  distinctly  historical  ballad  was 
not  only  sung  in  choral  by  Franks  of  the  seventh  cen- 
tury, but,  so  the  chronicler  declares,  was  actually  there 
*' composed  by  the  women  as  they  danced  and  clapped 
their  hands."      Women,   indeed,   seem  everywhere  ad- 

*  1  Sam.  x\'iii.  For  the  other  extract,  Exod.  xv,  Lowth  has  some  ex- 
cellent comment  on  the  "answered:"  De  sacra  Poes.  Hebr.,  ed.  Rosen- 
miiller,  pp.  205  ff. 


WOMEN  AS  SINGERS  OF  VICTORY  49 

dieted  to  this  choral  composition  of  verse;  and  in  the 
case  just  mentioned  the  song  became  traditional.  Com- 
ponebant,  however,  is  a  rare  word  in  these  reports ;  and 
the  fact  of  composition  has  to  be  inferred  by  analogy 
with  the  Frankish  song,  the  ballad  of  the  Faroe  fisher- 
man, and  many  convincing  cases  from  ethnology.  Tra- 
dition is  all  that  can  be  inferred  from  Barbour's  well- 
known  statement  about  a  certain  fight  in  Eskdale. 
Particulars,  he  remarks,^  he  need  not  give,  because  — 

"  Young  wemen,  quhen  thai  will  play, 
Syng  it  emang  thame  ilke  day." 

So  with  the  forged  chronicle  of  Croyland  when  it  says 
that  "women  and  maidens  sang  in  their  dance"  the 
exploits  of  Hereward.  In  neither  case,  however,  is  in- 
cidental improvisation  to  be  denied. 

The  fact  of  ballads  seems  clear  enough  for  old  times,  ^ 
and  choral  composition  is  to  be  inferred;  but  we  have 
restored  no  bridge  frona  our  balladry  back  to  the  original 
individual  versions.  We  found  no  real  stay  in  old  epic, 
and  no  direct  choral  origins.  We  shall  find  as  little  help 
in. the  mention  of  actual  sources,  or  in  the  suspicion  of 
them,  obtained  from  early  historians;  the  "ballads" 
which  they  name,  or  quote,  or  seem  to  quote,  cannot  be 
defined  save  in  the  most  general  terms.  They  may  have 
been  genuine  traditional  ballads,  even  choral  fragments; 

1  Bruce,  ed.  Skeat,  E.  E.  T.  Soc,  p.  399.  For  other  cases,  and  the 
Frankish  song  just  cited,  see  the  present  author's  Old  English  Ballads, 
Introduction,  pp.  Ixxvi  ff. 


50  THE    BALLAD 

they  may  have  been  songs  of  the  gleeman  and  the  pro- 
fessional bard.  What,  to  begin  with,  were  those  ballads 
of  Randolph,  Earl  of  Cliester  ?  What  were  the  Hereward 
songs,  and  all  the  outlaw  cycles?  Who  made  them? 
And  even  if  we  could  trace  them  to  tradition,  could  we 
be  sure  that  they  were  structurally  of  the  traditional  type  ? 
Were  they  of  the  minstrel  or  of  the  people  ?  Or  were  they 
made  in  the  old  warrior  fashion  by  the  men  who  them- 
selves did  the  deeds  and  lived  the  stirring  outlaw  life? 
Minstrels  are  not  a  remote  conjecture  for  some  cases. 
Randolph  is  actually  said  to  have  been  rescued  by  a 
"  rabble  of  minstrels,"  to  have  given  them  privileges,  and 
to  have  been  sung  by  them.  W^altheof,  contemporary  with 
Hereward  as  well  as  with  Eadric  the  Wild,  was  sung, 
says  Freeman,  "  in  the  warlike  songs  of  the  tongues  of 
both  his  parents;"  but  one  of  these  songs  is  preserved 
and  is  plainly  by  a  minstrel,  a  scald,  with  no  trace  of  the 
popular  ballad  about  it.  The  account  of  Waltheof's 
doughty  deeds  at  York  given  by  William  of  Malmesbury, 
a  fine  bit  of  description.  Freeman  thinks  to  be  plainly 
taken  "from  a  ballad."  What  sort  of  ballad?  Henry 
of  Huntingdon  takes  an  account  of  the  battle  of  Brunan- 
burh  from  a  "ballad,"  too;  but  the  source  in  this  case 
is  easily  recognized  as  that  fine  battle-poem  in  the  Chron- 
icle, and  is  no  ballad  at  all.  William  of  Malmesbury 
tells  explicitly  of  his  own  use  of  ballads,  and  comments 
on  their  value  as  historical  material.  He  distinguishes 
carefully  between  earlier  trustworthy  information  that  he 
got  from  written  documents  and  the  evidence  that  he 


SOURCES  OF  CHRONICLES  51 

must  now  take  from  "  ballads  —  cantilenae  —  crumbled 
by  the  successive  rubbings  of  time."  What  were  these 
cantilenae?  Three  centuries  later,  Blind  Harry,  Henry 
the  Minstrel,  was  singing  "the  things  commonly  related" 
of  William  Wallace  before  men  of  high  rank,  and  getting 
"food  and  raiment"  for  his  pains.  Maior,  the  old  his- 
torian, will  give  only  "partial  credit"  to  such  writings. 
But  the  extant  "Wallace"  with  its  learned  style,  its 
couplets  of  description  often  as  crisp  as  Chaucer's,  is 
absolutely  without  the  popular  note;  if  a  minstrel  wrote 
it  he  was  a  learned  man.  So,  too,  the  direct  inference 
of  traditional  ballads  in  Malmesbury's  case  is  open  to 
very  grave  doubt.  Professor  Child,  discussing  the  ballad 
of  "Gude  Wallace"  and  its  obvious  source  in  the  poem 
ascribed  to  Blind  Harry,  suggests  that  this  poem  itself 
was  founded  on  earlier  ballads  not  unlike  "  Gude  Wal- 
lace" itself,  the  wheel  thus  coming  full  circle.  But  in 
the  case  of  kings  and  prominent  men,  the  old  court  poet, 
the  minstrel,  is  always  to  be  suspected.  Even  Laya- 
mon,  who  heard  many  old  songs  in  his  story-haunted 
land  by  the  Severn  and  let  them  mingle  with  his  book- 
lore  to  make  the  tale  of  the  "  Brut,"  usually  suggests 
a  gleeman  of  some  sort  when  he  alludes  to  popular 
verse.  He  tells, ^  for  example,  of  songs  of  praise  when 
"the  king's  eldest  son  came  to  the  hustings  and  was 
lifted  to  king;"  when  a  king  returns  to  his  army,  and 

1  See,  in  the  order  of  citation,  verses  14641,  19212,  22077,  30608,  and 
9538.  "Said  in  song"  is  the  "carping"  such  as  Thomas  Rymer  used, 
the  ideal  gleeman  of  Scottish  tradition. 


52  THE    BALLAD 

"horns  were  blown  and  gleemen  sang;"  while  a  vic- 
torious army  was  marching  home  under  Arthur,  "and 
then  sang  the  men  wondrous  lays  of  Arthur  the  king, 
and  of  his  chieftains,  and  said  in  song,  never  in  world 
was  king  like  Arthur;"  in  a  charming  little  scene  on 
shipboard,  how  "the  sea  and  the  sun,  wind  and  the 
wide-sea,  were  glad,  and  the  flood  bore  the  ships,  and 
the  singers  (scopas)  were  singing;"  and  how,  after  a 
treaty  of  peace,  "  there  were  in  this  land  blissful  songs." 
Only  one  of  these  cases  is  obviously  choral.  It  was 
always  the  gleeman's  business  and  profit,  so  the  famous 
conclusion  of  "Widsith  "  shows,  to  sing  in  praise  of 
great  men.  Blame,  too,  was  his  business  as  a  jour- 
nalist, when  it  was  at  long  range.  Two  centuries  after 
Layamon,  in  the  so-called  prophecy,  really  a  retrospect, 
of  John  of  Bridlington,^  the  Scottish  king,  David,  is 
held  up  to  obloquy  as  one  who  is  going  to  be  sung  and 
harped  for  his  evil  courses ;  and  the  exposition  notes  that 
minstrels,  "as  they  were  wont  to  sing  the  deeds  of  good 
warriors,  must  sing  also  the  shameful  and  luxurious 
doings  of  this  David."  These  prophecies  and  their  like 
became  popular  enough.    Contemporary  satire  attacked 

*  The  text  is  interesting.  Psalletur  David  luxuria  festis,  says  the 
prophecy;  and  the  exposition:  quia  sic  solebant  ministralli  dicere  opera 
slrenua  ct  bellicosa  bonorum  militum,  ita  de  isto  David  jacient  gesta 
luxoriosa.  —  Wright,  Polit.  Poems,  i,  143.  For  a  mixture  of  various 
prophecies,  popular  enough  and  traditional,  see  the  third  "fytt"  of 
Thomas  of  Erceldoune ;  chap-books  embodj'ing  these  were  common 
in  Scottish  farmhouses  down  to  the  nineteenth  century.  —  Murray, 
Romance  and  Prophecies  of  Thomas  of  Erceldcmne,  E.  E.  T.  S.,  1875, 
pp.  ii,  xlii. 


JOURNALISM  AGAIN  53 

high  places;  the  commons  were  quick  enough  to  hold 
a  king  responsible  for  dearth,  injustice,  and  all  manner  of 
wrongs,  and  liked  to  sing  or  quote  sharp  verses  of  com- 
plaint. It  is  sheer  folly,  however,  to  range  this  sort  of 
poem,  popular  as  it  may  have  been,  with  traditional 
ballads;  and  even  on  lower  levels,  in  the  satires  on  the 
monks  and  friars,  the  complaints  about  landlords,  the 
moan  over  taxes,  which  come  down  to  us  as  the  voice 
of  an  oppressed  people,  we  are  simply  to  see  the  verse  of 
some  humble  poet  who  makes  himself  the  mouthpiece 
of  the  folk.  We  do  not  call  the  vision  about  Piers  the 
Plowman  a  series  of  popular  ballads.  Traditional  bal- 
lads tell  a  story,  or  else  give  a  situation,  story  and  situa- 
tion each  for  its  own  sake;  the  lyric  element  is  confined 
to  what  one  may  awkwardly  call  the  singable  qualities; 
and  any  ulterior  purpose,  any  subjective  hint,  even 
when  subjectivity  is  of  the  throng,  takes  a  poem  at 
"once  out  of  the  ballad  file. 

Even  on  strictly  narrative  ground,  and  in  a  case  where 
identity  of  subject-matter  is  supposed  to  link  an  acknow- 
ledged ballad  to  a  lost  source  of  chronicle  or  poem,  we 
can  draw  no  final  conclusion.  Identity  of  subject  cannot 
carry  with  it  identity  of  structure  and  form.  The  popu- 
lar ballad  of  "Sir  Aldingar"  tells  a  story  agreeing  in 
many  respects  with  the  account  which  Malmesbury  gives 
of  Gunhild,  daughter  of  Cnut  and  wife  of  the  German 
Henry  III;  "nor  can  we  doubt,"  says  Professor  Child, 
"that  William  is  citing  a  ballad."  But  we  hear  in  the 
fourteenth    century    of    such    a    ballad    in    professional 


54  THE    BALLAD 

hands.  In  1338  the  prior  of  St.  Swithin's  at  Winchester 
entertained  his  bishop  by  letting  a  minstrel,  a  joculator, 
sing  in  hall  the  ballad  of  Emma,  Gunhild's  mother, 
who  triumphed  in  her  ordeal  for  adultery.  During  the 
progress  of  this  ordeal  the  spectators  are  represented  as 
praying  for  the  queen  and  exhorting  her  to  be  firm. 
A  refrain.  Dieu  vous  save.  Dame  Emme,  seems  to  belong 
to  a  version  of  this  ballad  and  was  sung  by  the  common 
laborer  in  the  days  of  "Piers  Plowman."  ^  If  we  had  no 
better  evidence,  we  should  be  tempted  to  hand  over  "  Sir 
Aldingar"  to  Herbert  the  minstrel. 

It  is  the  old  dilemma.  In  the  lack  of  actual  material, 
any  theory  can  be  proved.  If  the  minstrel  is  favored  by 
one  account,  other  evidence  is  soon  found  to  over- 
whelm and  bury  him  out  of  sight.  From  the  earliest 
medieval  times,  "ballads"  were  made  and  sung  in  danc- 
ing by  the  throng,  and  from  the  earliest  medieval  times 
songs  about  men  and  events  were  made  by  the  minstrel. 
From  the  nature  of  the  case,  ^  communal  verse  was  not 


'  See  Warton,  Hist.  Eng.  Poetry,  ed.  1840,  pp.  81,  82,  who  is  quoting 
"an  antient  register  of  the  priory."  The  name  of  the  minstrel  is  given, 
—  Herbertus,  —  and  he  sings  also  a  local  ballad  of  Colbrand  whom  Guy 
had  conquered  just  outside  of  the  city.  It  is  noteworthy  for  the  popular 
side  of  these  ballads  that,  as  Warton  remarks,  the  Colbrand  story 
"remained  in  rude  painting  against  the  walls  of  the  north  transept  of 
the  cathedral  till  within  my  memory."  Further,  one  is  interested  in 
Warton's  quotation  from  the  directions  of  William  of  Wykeham  in  re- 
gard to  his  scholars  at  New  College.  They  were  to  have  a  fire  in  the  hall 
after  dinner  and  there  sing  songs,  recite  poems,  and  the  like.  These 
cantUenae  were  to  include  the  chronicles,  regnorum  chronicas.  (War- 
ton,  p.  84.) 


THE  BANNOCKBURN  FRAGMENTS     55 

recorded ;  but  the  recorded  verse  of  the  minstrel  is  never 
of  the  sort  found  in  our  traditional  ballads.  To  say  that 
this  antithesis  proves  the  communal  source  of  ballads 
is  manifestly  wrong.  Only  a  reasonable  probability 
springs  from  the  facts  at  our  command  on  these  lines 
of  investigation,  and  proof  must  be  sought  elsewhere. 
Some  of  the  material,  indeed,  which  has  been  arrayed 
for  the  support  of  communal  origins,  proves  too  much. 
The  two  jflytings  of  English  and  Scotch  soldiers  in  the 
war  of  1296  are  mere  taunting  songs,  with  little  trace, 
save  in  the  second,  of  a  choral;  and  they  have,  of  course, 
no  epic  touch  whatever.  Fabyan's  account  of  the  songs 
that  were  made  after  Bannockburn  "in  daunces,  in  the 
carols  of  the  maidens  and  minstrels  of  Scotland,"  is 
damaged,  not  so  much  by  the  collocation,  which  prob- 
ably means  that  everybody  was  making  songs  about 
the  fight,  as  by  the  specimen  of  the  verse  itself.  Marlowe 
inserted  it,  as  "a  jig"  made  "by  the  fleering  Scots,"  in 
his  "Edward  II."  The  refrain  is  popular,  a  kind  of 
water-chorus  used  by  sailors  and  oarsmen;  and  what  is 
it  doing,  one  may  ask,  in  that  galley  ?  The  text  is  unepic; 
it  is  of  the  taunt  or  flyting  order;  it  is  remote  from 
balladry  of  the  traditional  kind;  and  it  is  suspiciously 
like  the  work  of  that  "  professional  song- writer  of  his 
age,"  as  Wright  calls  him,  Laurence  Minot. 

"  Skottes  out  of  Berwik  and  of  Abirdene, 
At  the  Bannokburn  war  ye  to  kene"  .  .  . 

runs   his   taunt   on   the  vengeance  taken   by  the  third  %^ 
Edward  for  the  second  Edward's  disgrace.     This  verse 


66  THE    BALLAD 

of  Minot's,  too,  has  a  kind  of  refrain;   it  is  very  singable; 

the  vocative  note  is  dominant,  and  narrative  is  reduced 

to  mere  allusion.     There  is  no  traditional  touch.     It  is 

what  was    "sung   this  year,"  journalistic   lyric.      Very 

similar  is  Fabyan's  fragment:  — 

"  Maydens  of  Englande,  sore  may  you  mourne 
For  your  lemmans  ye  have  lost  at  Bannockisburn, 

With  heve  a  lowe. 
What,  weeneth  the  king  of  England 
So  soone  to  have  won  Scotland! 

With  rumbylowe." 

Perhaps  the  maidens  of  Scotland  are  responsible  for 
the  gibe  about  lost  lovers;  but  at  best  this  is  only  a  burr 
of  political  song  that  has  stuck  to  the  coats  of  chronicle. 
It  does  nothing  for  the  traditional  ballad. 

Minot  ceased  to  sing  about  1350;  in  1388  was  fought 
the  fight  responsible  for  two  of  our  finest  ballads.  Here 
tradition  has  done  its  perfect  work;  but  what  of  the 
original  stuff?  The  alliteration  in  the  "Cheviot"  and 
in  "Otterburn"  is  noticeable,  along  with  remains  of  a 
peculiar  stanzaic  arrangement.  Minot  hunts  the  letter 
with  positive  frenzy.  "Sir  Edward  oure  cumly  king"  is 
close  to  the  Robin  Hood  phrase.  Did  some  minstrel  like 
Minot  make  the  ballads  ?  Again  one  must  leap  to  no 
conclusion  of  this  sort.  It  is  true  that  the  bulk  of  the 
old  border  ballads,  along  with  the  Robin  Hood  cycle 
and  a  few  others,  must  be  put  in  a  class  far  advanced  in 
narrative  skill  and  scope  beyond  the  traditional  domestic 
ballads  that  best  represent  the  type;  but  the  former  are 
cast  in  the  ballad  mould,  differ  in  spirit,  rhythm,  metre, 


WHO   MADE  THE   BORDER   BALLADS? 

style,  both  from  old  minstrel  songs  and  from  lyrie 
of  the  Minot  variety,  and,  moreover,  can  be  attributed^ 
to  a  definite  source  on  fairly  definite  authority.  The 
border  ballads  seena  to  have  been  made,  as  Mr.  Andrew 
Lang  pointed  out,  by  the  borderers  themselves.  As  with 
warriors  of  Germanic  and  early  English  days,  so  these 
fighting  men  made  their  own  songs.  Leslie  ^  says  they 
"delyt  mekle  in  thair  awne  musick  and  Harmonic  in 
singing  quhilke  of  the  actes  of  thair  foirbearis  thay 
have  leired  or  quhat  thame  selfes  have  invented  of  ane 
ingenious  policie  to  dryve  a  pray  and  say  thair  prayeris." 
The  bishop's  Latin  is  really  more  to  the  point,  with  his 
cantiones,  —  quas  de  majorum  gestis,aut  ingeniosis  yrae- 
dandi  precandive  stratagematis ,  ipsi  confingunt.  This 
is  unequivocal;  ipsi  confingunt  is  plain  talk.  The  bor- 
derers, then,  made  songs  about  their  ancestors'  raids 
and  about  their  own;  so  do  primitive  folk  all  over  the 
world. ^  Warriors,  particularly,  who  have  the  communal 
feeling  as  in  the  intense  clannishness  of  the  border,  or 
in  the  days  of  Germanic  bands  united  by  that  most 
characteristic  Germanic  institution,  the  comitatus,  sing 
their  deeds  with  the  same  inevitableness  that  marks  the 

'  See  his  Historie  of  Scotland  wrytten  first  in  Latin  .  .  .  and  trans- 
lated in  Scottish  by  Father  James  Dalrymple,  1596,  edited  for  the  Scot- 
tish Text  Soc,  1888,  i,  101  f. 

^  See,  below,  the  ballad  Lads  of  Wamphray  discussed  for  its  earlier 
marks  of  structure  and  style.  In  the  Defense  of  Poesy,  just  after  the  praise 
of  "the  old  song  of  Percy  and  Douglas,"  Sidney  says:  "In  Hungary 
I  have  seen  it  the  manner  at  all  feasts  and  other  such  meetings,  to  have 
songs  of  their  ancestors'  valor." 


58  THE    BALLAD 

doing  of  them.  It  is  thus  possible  to  put  "Otterburn" 
and  the  "Cheviot"  in  Hne  with  songs  which  fighting  men 
sang  about  their  own  deeds  in  England  a  thousand 
years  ago;  but  the  line  is  only  a  vague  and  faint  tracing, 
it  concerns  only  a  small  group  of  ballads  in  the  collec- 
tions, and  it  touches  only  the  subject-matter  and  the 
conditions  of  making,  not  structure,  style,  and  metrical 
form,  not  the  qualities  that  go  to  mark  off  one  poetic 
species  from  another. 

The  first  glimpse  of  actual  ballad  structure  and  the 
ballad's  metrical  form,  which  is  to  be  met  in  English 
records,  has  an  interest  of  its  own;  but  even  this  does 
little  towards  solving  the  ballad  problem.  We  see,  to  be 
sure,  how  those  border  ballads  in  their  original  shape 
could  have  been  improvised  under  choral  conditions; 
for  here  at  last  are  the  ballad  style,  the  rhythm,  prob- 
ably the  refrain,  and,  moreover,  direct  testimony  that 
the  fragment  was  a  favorite  in  really  popular  tradition. 
The  tale  must  be  told  at  length.^  Cnut,  with  his  queen 
Emma  and  divers  of  the  great  nobles  (optimatibiis  regni), 
was  coming  by  boat  to  Ely;  and,  as  they  neared  land, 
the  king  stood  up,  and  told  his  men  to  row  slowly  while 
he  looked  at  the  great  church  and  listened  to  the  song 
of  the  monks  which  came  sweetly  over  the  water.  "Then 
he  called  all  who  were  with  him  in  the  boats  to  make  a 
circle  about  him,  and  in  the  gladness  of  his  heart  he  bade 
them  join  him  in  song,  and  he  composed  in  English  a 
ballad  (cantilenam)  which  begins  as  follows,  — 

*  From  "  Historia  Eliensis,"  ii,  27,  in  Gale,  Hist.  Script.,  i,  505. 


CNUT'S  "BALLAD"  59 

"  Merie  sungen  the  muneches  binnen  Ely, 
Tha  Cnut  ching  rew  ther  by. 

"  'Roweth,  cnihtes,  noer  the  land. 
And  here  we  thes  muneches  sang.' " 

The  chronicler  turns  this  into  Latin,  saying  then,  with 
unmistakable  reference  to  popular  tradition,  "  and  so 
the  rest,  as  it  is  sung  in  these  days  hy  the  people  in  their 
dances,  and  handed  down  as  proverbial." 

We  may  chip  and  cut,  with  critical  knives,  from  this 
pretty  story  as  we  will.  Cnut  himself  may  go,  precisely  as 
Alfred  is  sundered  from  his  proverbs;  and  the  modern 
look  of  the  words  may  take  them  well  hitherward  out  of 
the  eleventh  century;  what  remains  is  a  fragment  which 
is  not  only  one  of  the  earliest  pieces  of  verse  to  break 
away  from  the  stichic  order  of  Anglo-Saxon  poetry,  but 
is  in  the  metre  and  the  rhythm  which  belong  to  the  best 
popular  ballads.  The  story  of  Cnut's  making  is  highly 
interesting  as  a  true  process  if  not  a  true  fact;  for  it 
was  evidently  a  method  of  poetical  composition  which 
excited  no  comment  and  was  familiar  to  the  twelfth- 
century  writer  of  the  chronicle.  If  verses  were  impro- 
vised then,  under  choral  conditions,  in  the  rhythm  of 
the  traditional  ballads  which  begin  to  be  recorded  a 
couple  of  centuries  later,  there  is  every  reason  to  think 
of  such  a  process  and  such  a  result  lying  behind  that 
formula  of  ipsi  confingunt  which  Leslie,  an  eye-witness, 
affirms  for  border  verse  of  the  sixteenth  century  when  our 
best  traditional  ballads  were  making.  Better  even  than 
the  making,  than  the  improvisation   along  with  choral 


60  THE    BALLAD 

song,  is  the  popular  transmission  of  these  verses  of  the 
king;  the  singing  and  dancing  by  the  people,  the  tradi- 
tional note,  are  even  more  to  the  purpose.  Grundtvig  has 
shown  that  the  quoted  lines  are  very  probably  the  burden 
or  chorus  of  the  song  itself,  which  may  have  carried  them 
throughout,  along  with  the  improvised  narrative  verses  ^ 
which  followed,  or  else  let  them  alternate  as  full  chorus 
after  each  new  stanza;  and  he  gives  many  similar  cases 
from  old  Scandinavian  tradition.  Of  the  song  itself  there 
is  so  little  left  that  little  can  be  inferred.  It  may  be  a 
mere  refrain,  a  rowing-chorus  such  as  one  finds,  however 
irrelevant  it  seems  there,  in  the  Bannockburn  verses,  and 
in  many  Danish  ballads;  but  one  would  like  to  hear 
the  rest  of  the  piece  as  "still  sung  by  the  people  in  their 
dances."  The  main  point  is  that  here  for  the  first  time 
occurs  that  two-line  stanza  in  which  so  many  of  the  oldest 
English  and  Scandinavian  ballads  are  composed.^  In 
a  sense,  Cnut's  song  is  the  beginning  of  recorded  English 
balladry;  ^   but  it  is   balladry  from  the  warrior  caste, 

^  Grundtvig  thinks  the  missing  verses  were  epic,  and  told  of  Cnut's 
conquest,  —  a  chronicle-ballad  in  the  grand  style. 

^  Nearly  all  English  ballads  are  either  in  this  measure,  —  couplets 
of  four  accents  in  each  verse,  —  which  seems  by  Professor  Usener's 
showing  to  have  been  the  prevailing  measure  for  early  popular  poetry 
everywhere,  or  else  in  the  so-called  "ballad"  measure,  a  stanza  of  four 
verses  with  four  accents  in  the  first  and  third,  and  three  in  the  second 
and  fourth.  The  couplet  is  undoubtedly  the  older  form ;  and  if  we  add 
to  it  the  refrain  as  alternate  verse,  we  have  also  a  stanza  of  four  verses. 

^  Some  tradition  of  Cnut's  improvisation  was  obviously  connected 
with  the  words  of  a  favorite  song  at  rural  dances;  and  so  came  the  cir- 
cumstantial account. 


MISCONCEPTIONS  OF  THE   PROBLEM        61 

and  of  the  chronicle  or  epic  type,  rather  than  of  domestic 
tradition;  and  while  it  gives  a  glimpse  of  the  trans- 
mitting folk  of  the  countryside,  its  story  of  origin  is 
obviously  conventional  and  based  upon  surmise. 

IV.    SPECIFIC    MARKS    OF    THE    BALLAD 

Between  definition  by  origins  and  definition  by  desti- 
nation no  choice  is  to  be  reached  by  attempting  to  follow 
our  popular  ballads  back  through  the  fifteenth  century 
and  so  to  connect  them  with  song  and  heroic  lay  of 
medieval  times.  It  remains,  then,  to  study  the  ballad 
itself,  and  determine  whether  it  was  primarily  of  a  piece 
with  those  forms  of  verse  which  are  conceded  to  popular 
origins.  What  are  the  specific  marks  of  the  ballad  ?  What 
is  there  in  the  structure,  the  style,  the  setting,  and  the 
conditions  of  it,  which  must  refer  it  either  to  ennobled 
popular  improvisation  or  to  degenerate  art  ? 

Before  these  questions  are  answered,  however,  there 
is  a  bit  of  house-cleaning  to  be  done.  Rubbish  left  by 
the  romantic  school  is  still  to  be  swept  away,  and  facts 
must  be  set  in  their  place  again,  whence  they  have  been 
pushed  by  the  modern  school  of  common  sense  in 
hysterics.  There  is  no  miracle,  no  mystery  even,  to  be 
assumed  for  the  making  of  the  ballad,  which  was  com- 
posed originally,  as  any  other  poem  is  composed,  by  the 
rhythmic  and  imaginative  efforts  of  a  human  mind.  The 
differencing  factors  lie  in  the  conditions  of  the  process, 
and  not  in  the  process  for  itself.  Again,  all  that  can  be 
recovered  by  a  reconstruction  of  these  conditions  is  the 


62  THE    BALLAD 

poetic  form,  the  ballad  as  ballad,  and  not  the  original 
poetic  product.  It  should  be  cried  from  the  housetops 
that  no  one  expects  to  find  in  the  ballads  of  the  collec- 
tions anything  which  springs  directly  from  the  ancient 
source.  Apart  from  literary  influences,  there  is  the  great 
factor  of  oral  tradition,  which  has  made  over  and  over 
again  the  stuff  of  communal  song.  Stripped,  then,  of 
these  old  reproaches,  our  search  is  anything  but  a  fan- 
tastic attempt.  Nothing  could  be  more  practical  and 
sensible  than  inquiry  into  the  origins  of  that  poetic 
species  which  oral  tradition  has  chosen  as  the  form  of 
its  favorite  narrative  themes,  and  nothing  could  be  more 
scientific,  by  way  of  determining  these  origins,  than  a 
study  of  the  form  itself.  Confusion  of  the  two  problems, 
form  and  product,  is  absurd.  Nothing  is  done  for  the 
study  of  the  ballad  as  a  literary  species  when  one  has 
attributed  "Kinmont  Willie"  to  Scott  and  the  better  part 
of  "Tam  Lane"  to  Burns;  one  has  simply  settled  two 
interesting  questions  of  detail,  and  has  merely  proved 
that  the  form  of  the  ballad  can  be  fairly  well  imitated. 
The  problem  of  the  species  still  remains;  and  it  remains 
unsolved  even  after  the  next  and  obvious  step  of  assum- 
ing that  all  ballads  are  simply  the  late  appropriation  by 
the  lower  classes  of  poetry  once  made  for  the  upper 
classes  or  for  the  learned  and  the  reading  world.  An  in- 
genious study  ^  has  recently  appeared  to  show  how  illiter- 
ate folk  even  now  appropriate  in  this  way  some  poem, 

1  John   Meier,  Kunstlieder  im  Volksmunde,  Halle,  1906;    see  pp. 
xix  ff. 


CORRUPTION  IN  TRANSMISSION  63 

changing  and  corrupting  it  almost  beyond  recognition. 
Nobody  denies  this  process.  Here,  for  example,  in  the 
question-column  of  a  widely  read  newspaper,'  is  a 
query  which  the  editor  does  not  answer.  Where  is  the 
poem,  asks  a  correspondent,  "in  which  these  lines  occur? 

"  I  thank  whatever  gods  there  be 

For  my  unconquerable  soul. 
I  have  not  shrunk  or  cried  aloud 

Beneath  the  bludgeonings  of  fate. 
My  head  is  bloody  but  unbowed. 

I  am  the  master  of  my  fate, 
I  am  the  captain  of  my  soul." 

To  such  a  case,  at  the  shortest  possible  range  of  tradi- 
tion and  in  a  world  of  printed  things,  has  come  Henley's 
poem!  The  grasp  of  thought  and  phrase,  the  lapse  in 
stanza  and  rime,  are  very  interesting;  the  inquirer,  is  an 
educated  person.  On  lower  levels,  as  Child  points  out, 
and  under  oral  conditions,  the  confusion  lays  hold  of 
word  and  idea;  "they  cast  their  glamourie  o'er  her," 
in  "The  Gypsy  Laddie,"  becomes  "they  called  their 
grandmother  over;"  and  the  "consecrated  cross-eyed 
bear"  of  the  little  girl's  hymn  comes  into  mind.  But 
this  Malaprop. Jheory  of.  the,  ballad  as  a  distorted  poem 
of  art  will  never  do.  It  is  very  simple.  German  editors 
tell  of  "folk  songs"  that  are  simply  Schiller  or  Uhland 
with  a  difference,  and  sometimes  a  very  great  difference, 
A.nd  there  is  Dr.  John  Meier's  case  of  a  mawkish  poem 
which  he  thinks  is  to  settle  the  ballad  question  out  of 
hand.  In  these  verses,  written  about  1781  by  a  German 
'  Philadelphia  Evening  Bulletin,  Nov.  16,  1906. 


64  THE    BALLAD 

nobleman  named  Von  Stamford,  "Fair  Annie"  is  spin- 
ning \p  a  song  of  pure  drivel,  which  she  exchanges  for 
dialogue  even  more  drivelish  as  a  young  knight  comes 
up  and  asks  her  to  go  to  his  castle.  She  rejects  his  silks 
and  satins,  but  counters  deftly  by  asking  him  to  put 
down  his  name  for  a  contribution  in  relief  of  a  distressed 
neighbor.  She  describes  the  distress,  and  bursts  into 
tears ;    the  knight  — 

.  .  .  "husch!  im  Wagen 
Befahl  da  von  zu  jagen  "... 

and  the  poem  ends  with  advice  for  all  girls  under  such 
temptation  to  use  the  same  means  of  escape.  The  num- 
ber and  variety  of  versions  of  this  mawkish  poem  which 
sprang  up  among  unlettered  German  folk  can  only 
wake  our  wonder.  But  what  do  they  prove?  Precisely 
what  is  proved  by  the  game  of  gossip,  where  a  story  is 
whispered  from  ear  to  ear  in  a  large  circle  of  players ;  by 
the  versions  of  any  oral  tradition,  verse  or  prose;  and 
even  by  the  manuscript  copies  of  a  widely  read  poem. 
They  solve  no  problem  of  origins;  they  only  illustrate 
the  process  of  transmission.  So  we  go  back  to  our  inquiry 
after  the  specific  marks  of  the  ballad,  and  essay  the  va- 
rious tests  which  are  commonly  supposed  to  determine  it. 
Ballads,  then,  like  folk  song,  chorals  of  labor,  and  pop- 
ular verse  generally,  are  handed  down  by  oral  tradition; 
and  we  have  seen  that  this  traditional  quality  is  thought 
by  some  writers  to  be  the  only  ballad  test.  But  it  leaves 
the  question  of  origins  untouched.  It  accounts  for  the 
many  variants,  the  versions  more  or  less  diverging  in  stuff 


ORAL  TRADITION  65 

and  style,  of  a  given  ballad,  and  for  all  the  peculiarities 
which  that  sort  of  transmission  must  bring  about;  but 
it  will  not  account  for  the  original  ballads  or  for  most  of 
those  specific  qualities  which  set  them  off  from  poetry  of 
art.  Whosoever  tries  to  make  tradition  account  for  these 
things,  stretches  its  powers  beyond  all  belief;  and  a  far 
simpler  explanation  is  at  hand.  Tradition,  of  course,  is 
an  absolute  test  in  exclusion ;  the  popular  ballad  of  our 
collection  must  be,  or,  like  the  old  printed  versions, 
must  once  have  been,  transmitted  in  this  way;  but  all 
traditional  verse  is  not  ballad,  and  much  of  it  differs 
radically.  A  recent  printed  collection  of  deplorably  low 
songs  can  be  put  to  good  use  in  illustrating  this  difference. 
We  see  not  only  how  four  or  five  genuine  ballads  stick 
fiery  off  from  the  sooty  mass,  but  also  how  this  under- 
ground spreading  of  songs,  which  are  written  in  many  a 
case  by  known  authors,  fails  to  divest  them  of  the  per- 
sonal and  artistic  note.  Like  that  mawkish,  sentimental, 
feebly  didactic  poem  which  became,  save  the  mark,  a 
"folk  song"  in  Germany,  so  a  wanton  song  by  Burns 
or  another,  impossible  for  decent  print,  spreads  with 
changes,  and  often  very  great  changes,  among  lovers  of 
the  unlovely,  until  between  a  couple  of  versions  here,  or 
between  these  and  a  copy  in  some  manuscript  collection, 
there  is  hardly  relationship  left.  So  it  is  with  ballad 
versions.  But  this  vital  distinction  remains,  not  only  that 
the  song  can  be  traced  to  its  author  back  from  the  various 
versions  under  popular  control,  and  that  the  ballad  can- 
not be  so  traced,  but  also  that  the  song,  in  all  its  windings 


66  THE    BALLAD 

and  variations  of  fact  and  phrase,  still  bears  the  mark 
of  individual  authorship  and  differs  in  no  specific  way 
from  its  original,  while  the  ballad,  however  far  it  be 
followed  back,  is  still  a  poem  specifically  different  from 
the  poem  of  known  authors.  In  other  words,  both  cases 
of  variation  are  due  to  mainly  oral,  traditional  record, 
but  no  trait  of  the  ballad  as  a  species,  whether  in  structure, 
in  style,  in  form,  or  in  general  spirit,  is  due  to  this  varia- 
tion so  as  to  disappear  as  one  approaches  its  supposed 
personal  source.  Tradition  in  itself  will  not  explain  the 
ballad.^  What  it  does  explain  we  shall  see  in  the 
chapter  on  Sources. 

This  impersonal  quality  of  ballads  as  a  species  is  in 
no  way  disturbed  by  the  use  of  the  first  person.  The 
cases  are  comparatively  few,  and  the  "I"  is  even  then 
extrinsic,  perfunctory,  not  personal  in  a  real  sense.  Bal- 
lads of  the  broadside  kind,  telling  of  adventure  by  bands 
of  men,  armies,  or  the  like,  use  the  first  person  plural.^ 
The  singer  of  the  ballad  pretends  now  and  then  to  have 
seen  the  characters  and  heard  their  talk:  ^   "By  Arthur's 

1  There  is  no  need  to  point  out  the  personal  note  of  the  folk  song  as 
compared  with  the  impersonal  note  of  the  ballad.  For  particular  con- 
trasts, however,  one  may  note  Bonny  Bee  Horn,  Child,  no.  92,  and  its 
related  "song,"  The  Lowlands  of  Holland;  further  Jamie  Douglas, 
no.  204,  and  the  song  Waly,  Waly.  Folk  songs,  kittle  cattle  to  shoe  in 
any  case,  are  uncommonly  baffling  in  English  records. 

2  So  nos.  164,  285. 

3  Nos.  92,  55,  188,  163,  A,  38,  183;  see  also  108,  and  111, —  a 
"minstrel  ballad"  out  and  out.  The  minstrel  is  audible  enough,  and 
his  "I"  is  very  bold,  in  ballads  like  the  Rising  in  the  North,  175;  but 
in  182  he  is  only  the  singer,  not  the  maker. 


THE      I"   OF  THE   BALLADS  67 

Dale  as  late  I  went,"  or  "On  the  daAvning  of  the  day,  I 
heard  two  brothers  make  their  moan,"  or  "As  I  came  in 
by  Dunidier,"  or  "As  I  was  walking  all  alone."  More 
remotely,  as  in  the  very  old  ballad  of  "Robyn  and 
Gandelyn,"  the  singer  hears  "a  carping  of  a  clerk," 
that  is,  the  story  of  a  bookman,  a  scholar,  an  authority; 
and  he  proceeds  to  tell  what  he  heard  told.  What  he 
tells,  however,  is  a  genuinely  popular  and  traditional 
ballad  with  its  refrain.  So  with  the  dream-opening,  so 
familiar  in  medieval  literature;  "As  I  was  cast  in  my 
first  sleep"  is  the  beginning  of  a  disordered  ballad, 
"Young  Andrew."  The  harmless  character  of  this  "I" 
of  the  singer  or  reciter  comes  out  admirably  in  the  fourth 
stanza  of  "Lord  Lovel"  —  the  version  of  the  Percy 
papers,  taken  down  from  singing:  — 

"He  called  up  his  stable-groom, 
To  saddle  his  milkwhite  steed; 
Dey  down,  dey  dowfi,  dey  down  derry  down, 
I  wish  Lord  Lovill  good  speed"   .  .  . 

There  is  an  amusing  interpolation  of  the  singer  in  "Young 
Beichan."  Still  less  significance  attaches  to  the  "I"  of 
a  dramatic  story  such  as  is  told  by  the  victim  of  "Alison 
Gross,"  or  begun  by  Mary  Hamilton;  ^  in  the  latter  case, 
and  in  "The  Flower  of  Serving  Men,"  "I"  turns  into 
"she."  In  quoted  stanzas,  indeed,  the  egotism  does  not 
count;  and  nobody  grudges  the  reciter  of  long-winded  bal- 
lads his  occasional"!  tell  you  in  certain."  Theiiallad  ego, 
on  the  whole,  has  nothing  to  say  to  the  question  of  origins. 

*  No.  173,  E.   See  also  36,  TheLaily  Worm,  which  is  "pure^ tradition." 


68  THE    BALLAD 

Traditional,  objective,  impersonal,  as  they  are,  ballads 
must  also  tell  a  definite  tale.  Although  this  is  a  test 
common  to  all  epic  verse,  it  acquires  peculiar  significance 
for  the  ballads  on  account  of  their  community  of  interest, 
which  gathers  scattered  versions  from  all  times  and  lands 
into  groups  that  again  seem  to  form  an  almost  definite 
and  coherent  whole.  No  account  of  these  mutual  rela- 
tions, however  broadly  sketched,  can  do  justice  to  them 
in  comparison  with  a  single  but  comprehensive  study 
like  Professor  Child's  introduction  to  "Lady  Isabel  and 
the  Elf-Knight."  And  yet,  for  all  the  community  of 
material,  and  for  all  the  rigid  objectivity  in  treatment  of 
it,  ballads  cannot  be  set  off  in  these  terms  from  narrative 
and  objective  poetry  of  art.  Ballads,  like  folk  tales,  share 
some  of  their  stories,  their  subject  and  motive,  with  lit- 
erature, and  at  times  in  a  relation  of  dependence.  "King 
Orfeo,"  of  course,  is  the  old  story  of  Orpheus  and  Eury- 
dice;  Hero  and  Leander  were  made  to  tell  their  tale  of 
woe  again  in  southern  and  northwestern  Europe;  "Sir 
Hugh"  and  the  Prioress's  story  in  Chaucer  deal  with 
the  same  essential  facts,  and  spring  practically  from  the 
same  legend.  Ballads  have,  as  a  rule,  better  claims  to 
priority  than  the  romance  can  offer;  but  there  are  un- 
doubted instances  where,  so  far  as  material  is  concerned, 
ballads  derive  from  the  romance.  It  is  true  that  ballads 
as  they  lie  before  us  seem  to  exist  for  the  sake  of  their 
story,  and  for  no  other  pervasive  purpose;  but  ballads 
have  not  always  been  what  they  are.  Despite  its  rank  as 
necessary  condition,  narrative  is  not  a  fixed,  fundamental, 


THE  NARRATIVE  TEST  69 

primary  fact  in  the  ballad  scheme.  The  ballad  was  not 
exclusively  epic  from  its  start,  as  was  the  heroic  lay.  The 
greatest  ballads  affect  us  not  by  the  story  itself  but  by 
the  way  in  which  the  story  is  told;  and  this  "way"  is 
not  narrative  art  at  high  pitch.  Narrative  art  at  high 
pitch  we  get  in  the  prose  sagas  of  Iceland;  they  are 
literature,  literature  "just  on  the  autumnal  verge;"'  the 
moment  that  one  brings  even  the  best  ballads  into  con- 
trast with  these  sagas,  one  ceases  to  boast  about  nar- 
rative art  as  the  test  of  balladry,  and  one  casts  about 
for  other  explanation  of  the  charm  which  pervades  a 
"Babylon"  or  a  "Sir  Patrick  Spens."  It  will  not  do  to 
say  that  ballads  are  artless  narrative,  and  charm  by 
their  artlessness,  while  the  saga  is  art  itself;  artless  nar- 
rative is  best  studied  in  the  popular  tale.  This  mdrchen, 
again,  itself  as  old  as  any  aesthetic  propensity  in  man, 
will  do  nothing  for  the  origins  of  balladry;  it  follows 
an  entirely  different  line  and  springs  from  an  entirely 
different  impulse,  as  any  observer  can  determine  for 
himself  who  watches  the  same  group  of  children,  now 

'  Ker,  Epic  and  Romance,  p.  235.  The  sagas,  he  says,  pp.  241  f.,  "are 
the  last  stage  in  a  progress  from  the  earhest  mythical  imagination  and 
the  earliest  dirges  and  encomiums  of  the  great  men  of  a  tribe  to  a  con- 
sistent and  orderly  form  of  narrative  literature,  attained  by  the  direction 
of  a  critical  faculty  .  .  .  the  great  victory  of  the  Humanities  in  the 
North,  at  the  end  of  a  long  process  of  education."  If,  now.  Professor 
Ker  remarks  that  "the  ballad  poetry  of  the  Faroes  is  derived  from 
Icelandic  literary  traditions"  (pp.  324  f.),he  must  limit  this  derivation 
to  narrative  material,  and  —  see  above,  p.  24  —  make  even  that  only 
partial.  The  ballad  genesis  is  more  plainly  proved  for  the  Faroes  than 
for  any  other  modern  people. 


70  THE    BALLAD 

playing  "Ring  round  the  Rosy,"  or  what  not,  singing 
and  shouting  in  concert  with  clasped  hands  and  con- 
senting feet,  now  sitting  silent,  absorbed,  while  some  one 
tells  them  a  story.  As  with  the  manner,  so  with  the 
material.  No  test  can  be  obtained  for  the  ballad  by  a 
comparison  of  its  matter  with  these  tales  which  have  long 
formed  the  flotsam  and  jetsam  of  European  narrative. 
The  actual  community  of  subject  in  ballad  and  folk  tale 
is  limited.  Ballads  rest  primarily  on  situation  and  deed 
of  familiar,  imitable  type;  the  popular  tale,  untram- 
meled  by  rhythmic  law,  by  choral  conditions,  tends  to 
a  more  subtle  motive,  a  more  striking  fact,  a  more 
unexpected,  memorable  quality,  and  a  more  intricate 
coherence  of  events. 

Stories  and  poetical  forms,  moreover,  stand  in  no 
mutual  relation  of  cause  and  effect.  The  point  is  clear  that 
when  one  has  traced  the  story  of  a  given  ballad,  one  has 
by  no  means  settled  the  origins  of  ballads  as  a  poetic 
genre.  Professor  Child's  introduction  to  "Lady  Isabel 
and  the  Elf- Knight"  shows  the  manifold  migrations  of 
a  ballad-subject,  and  Professor  Bi^gge's  essay  ^  on  the 
Orpheus  and  Eurydice  motive  disposes  of  the  idea  that 
in  such  cases  the  ballads  and  the  legend  itself  were  both 
branches  of  an  old  myth.  But  grant  that  a  ballad,  "  Har- 
pens  Kraft,"  was  really  made  about  the  year  1400  by  a 
Scandinavian  singer,  who  got  it  from  a  traditional  German 
version,  into  which  he  put  certain  features,  which,  in 
their  turn,  came  from  Scotland  or  England  to  the  Danes; 
*  "Harpens  Kraft,"  in  ArJdv  for  Nord.  Fil.,  vii,  97  S.  (1891). 


SOURCE  OF  PLOT  AND  ORIGIN  OF  FORM    71 

suppose  that  all  this  ballad  material  goes  back,  through 
English  versions  of  the  late  thirteenth  century,  to  a 
romance  composed  about  1200  by  a  Breton  poet,  who 
retold  it,  "with  Celtic  touches,"  from  the  old  medieval 
Latin  tradition,  whither  it  had  come  from  the  classics! 
So  we  run  a  fine  chase,  through  wild  country,  and  are 
more  or  less  sure  —  until  the  next  hunt  —  that  we  have 
kept  the  trail  notwithstanding  very  feeble  scent;  the  fox 
nobody  dreams  of  finding.^  Actually,  too,  we  have 
acquired  valuable  information  about  the  migration  of 
a  good  story.  But  of  the  origins  of  that  particular  form 
of  poetry  to  which  this  subject  turned  when  it  was 
embodied  in  ballads  like  "Harpens  Kraft,"  or  the  Shet- 
land "Kino;  Orfeo,"  we  have  learned  no  more  than  we 
have  learned  of  the  origins  of  epic,  of  romance,  of  popular 
tale.  We  still  confront  the  problem  of  the  ballad  as  a 
poetic  genre. 

V.     THE    BALLAD    STRUCTURE 

.  The  differencing  quality  of  the  ballad  of  tradition  lies 
not  in  its  subject,  which  may  be  anything,  not  in  its 
setting,  which  may  be  anywhere,  but  in  its  actual  struc- 
ture. Structure,  moreover,  must  not  be  misunderstood 
as  style.  Manner,  style,  what  is  vaguely  called  the  note 
of  ballads,  is  indeed  characteristic  and  may  be  unique; 
but  it  is  not  the  fundamental  fact.  The  ballad,  of  course, 
like  any  real  lyric,  must  be  sung,  it  must  have  a  tune; 
and  this  tune,  usually  rustic,  unsophisticated,  is  provo- 
'  See  the  chapter  on  Sources. 


72  THE    BALLAD 

cative  as  well  as  reminiscent  of  accompanying  steps; 
but  the  same  thing  is  true  of  many  a  song  utterly  foreign 
to  the  ballad.  The  ballad,  as  its  name  implies,  was 
originally  inseparable  from  the  dance;  but  other  forms 
of  verse  were  also  choral,  and  the  proof  of  origin  in  the 
dance  itself  must  be  made,  and  presently  will  be  made, 
by  more  direct  proof  than  this  wavering  line  of  connection. 
So,  too,  with  that  other  "rustic"  note  of  simplicity,  the 
use  of  common  words  in  common  order,  and  the  lack  of 
all  figurative  and  tropical  language;  while  characteristic 
of  the  ballad,  this  is  not  its  essential  mark  of  structure. 
Simplicity,  moreover,  is  a  very  equivocal  word.  The 
Icelandic  sagas  are  simple,  and  so  is  a  lyric  of  Words- 
worth; but  the  ballads  are  not  simple  in  this  artistic 
way.  William  Blake  wrote  simple  lyric  verse,  and  he 
has  the  ballad  note  of  repetition;  but  his  lines  about 
the  piper  piping  down  the  valleys  give  no  ballad  effect, 
while  a  single  phrase  — 

"  O  sunflower,  weary  of  time,"  — 

beautiful  as  it  is,  carries  an  inference  of  pathos  and 
reflection  that  the  ballad  never  knew.  Indeed,  it  is  the 
thought  and  meaning  of  the  ballads  which  are  simple,) 
rather  than  their  expression;  for  while  Matthew  Arnold 
wrote  ver)^  wildly  about  the  ballads'  "slang,"  he  was 
right  in  attributing  to  them  a  dialect  of  their  own;  and 
this  dialect  is  not  simple  in  the  severest  sense  of  the 
word. 

Rudeness  or  roughness,  whatever  quality  superficial 


SIMPLICITY   AND   RUDENESS  73 

critics  contrast  in  ballads  with  the  smoothness  of  art,  is 
even  farther  from  the  mark.  It  is  true  that  they  phinge  - 
often  into  the  heart  of  the  subject,  without  a  word  of 
explanation.  "It  begins  in  the  fifth  act  of  the  play," 
was  Gray's  admiring  comment  on  a  version  of  "Child 
Maurice;"  and  Dr.  Johnson  thought  that  Gray  him- 
self stole  ballad  thunder  for  the  opening  of  his  "Bard."  y 
"This  abruptness  has  nothing  new  in  it.  .  .  .  Nay,  we 
have  it  in  the  old  song  of  Johnny  Armstrong."  But 
roughness  of  the  stylistic  sort,  rude  rimes  and  metres. 


are  not  essential.  Cromek  ^  says  "  it  was  once  the  opinion 
of  ^iirns  that  a  poet  of  a  nice  ear  and  fine  taste  might 
compose  songs  without  the  incumbrance  of  rhyme.  He 
was  led  into  this  error  by  the  seeming  dissonance  of  many 
of  them  in  this  necessary  appendage."  But  imperfect 
rimes  do  not  even  characterize  the  ballad  in  general,  and 
are  often  apparent  only  to  the  eye;  it  need  hardly  be 
added  that  rhythm  in  actual  ballads,  as  they  were  \ 
sung,  is  "always  exact  to  a  fault,  Jh^wevjer^the  record  may' 
distort  it. 

Neither  the  vague  test  of  simplicity  nor  the  false  test 
of  imperfect  rhythm  and  rime  will  do.  We  must  look 
deeper  into  the  case,  and  find  tests  that  are  organic. 
The  refrain  is  an  organic  part  of  the  ballad;  it  is  of  great 
structural  importance ;  and  under  certain  conditions  it 
comes  close  to  the  requisite  test.  It  establishes  beyond 
air  douBt  the  lyric  and   choral   origins.     Ballads   were 

'  Remains  of  Nithsdale  and  Galloway  Song,  London,  1810,  p.  vi,  — 
quoting  from  another  work. 


74  THE    BALLAD 

at  first  always  sung,^  and  always  had  a  refrain;  ^  the 
refrain  is  incontestably  sprung  from  singing  of  the  peo- 
ple at  dance,  play,  work,  going  back  to  that  choral 
repetition  which  seems  to  have  been  the  protoplasm  of 
all  poetry.  Refrains,  of  course,  hold  fast  in  oral  tradition, 
but  tend  to  drop  from  the  record,  where  text  and  nar- 
rative verses  play  the  only  important  part.  If,  now,  one 
finds  a  ballad  made  up  of  verses  and  a  constant  refrain, 
is  it  not  fair  to  assume  that  both  belong  to  the  same 
source,  and  that  written  composition  of  the  text  is  far  less 
likely  than  improvisation  in  the  throng,  which  is  demon- 
strably responsible  for  the  refrain  itself.^  Indeed,  the 
fact  of  ballads  made  in  this  way  stands  beyond  doubt.^ 

'  For  the  singing  of  a  given  ballad,  say  The  Fair  Flower  of  Northum- 
berland, no.  9,  see  Deloney,  work  quoted,  p.  195;  the  maidens  "in  dul- 
cet manner  chanted  out  this  song,  two  of  them  singing  the  Ditty  and 
all  the  rest  bearing  the  burden."  This  is  before  king  and  queen;  but 
the  process  was  doubtless  the  same  as  in  humbler  cases.  "  The  oxygen 
and  hydrogen,"  announced  a  lecturer  heard  by  royalty,  "will  now  have 
the  honor  of  amalgamating  in  the  presence  of  your  Royal  Highness." 

^  This  is  proved  by  Professor  Steenstrup,  Vore  Folkeviser,  pp.  75  ff. 
Out  of  502  Scandinavian  ballads  which  he  examined,  only  20  lacked  a 
refrain.  In  English,  owing  to  the  increase  of  chronicle  ballads,  the 
figures  are  not  so  striking;  but  they  tell  the  same  tale.  Of  the  305  bal- 
lads in  Child's  collection,  106  show  in  some  version  evidence  of  chorus 
or  refrain.  Of  some  1250  versions  in  all,  about  300  have  a  refrain;  but 
among  the  old  ballads  in  couplets,  out  of  31  only  7  lack  the  refrain  as 
they  stand,  and  even  these  show  traces  of  it.  In  the  German  ballads 
refrains  are  even  less  evident;  but  the  tendency  to  chronicle  ballads, 
which  of  course  are  recited  and  need  no  refrain,  and  the  preponderance 
of  rival  folk  song,  explain  easily  this  decadence  of  the  choral  element. 
Wolf  has  placed  beyond  doubt  the  popular  origin  of  refrains:  see  his 
Lais,  etc.,  pp.  27,  191. 

^  See  the  Faroe  ballad  described  above,  p.  24. 


BALLAD   ORIGINS  DEFINED  75 

Basing  one's  assertion  on  these  elements  of  recurrent 
refrain  and  alternate  improvisation,  one  could  safely 
define  the  ballad,  by  origins,  as  a  narrative  lyric  made 
and  sung  at  the  dance  and  handed  down  in  popular 
tradition.  This  formula,  of  course,  strictly  valid  only  for 
vanished  and  primitive  days,  would  imply  in  later  stages 
a  dwindling  of  lyric  and  choral  elements  in  favor  of 
epic;  and  it  would  agree  with  facts.  All  Greek  poetry, 
and  there  is  no  higher  type,  began  in  some  kind  of  sing- 
ing; poetry  everywhere  so  begins;  and  the  sundering  of 
music  and  words  is  a  recognized  process  which  would 
keep  pace  with  tEe^ecTine  of  purely  choral  verse,  the 
rise  of  individual  poets,  and  the  increase  of  passive 
interest  in  story  and  idea  for  themselves.  Improvisa- 
tion, once  almost  universal  among  peasants  and  rural 
folk  throughout  Europe,  is  conceded  by  Aristotle,  in  an 
empiric  way,  as  the  basis  of  poetry;  theoretically,  too, 
it  is  only  composition  in  a  rude,  unreflective  stage.  The 
ease  of  applying  communal  improvisation  to  the  ballad 
problem  is  obvious  to  any  one  who  reads  Professor 
Kittredge's  comments  ^  on  the  process. 

Doubtless,  now,  this  ought  to  serve  as  a  definition  of 
ballad  origins.  It  shows  what  ballads  may,  even  must, 
have  been.  But  it  is  not  an  adequate  account  of  ballads 
as  they  lie  before  us,  of  ballads  in  their  bulk  and  actual 
text,  of  the  "  Child  Waters,"  the  "  Sir  Patrick  Spens," 
the  "Twa  Sisters"  of  our  collection.  The  early  texts, 
we  say,  were  mainly  improvised  by  dancers  in  intervals 
*  Cambridge  Ed.  Child's  Ballads,  p.  xxiv. 


76  THE    BALLAD 

of  the  choral  refrain;  this  is  a  reasonable  supposition, 
but  so  far  it  is  only  a  supposition.  It  has  been  denied 
outright,  and  other  explanations  have  been  given.  The 
texts,  one  could  answer,  are  not  really  needed  for  choral 
purposes,  and,  allowing  for  the  difference  in  time  and 
place,  might  well  have  been  suggested  to  a  rustic  poet  by 
the  refrain  itself,  somewhat  as  on  higher  levels  of  art  a 
crude  bit  of  popular  verse  suggested  "Childe  Roland  to 
the  Dark  Tower  Came,"  or  as,  by  Pater's  pretty  imagin- 
jing,  a  great  hymn  to  love  sprang  from  the  repeated 
\Cras  amet  of  a  Roman  festal  throng.  A  rough  but  effi- 
cient criticism  might  set  aside  hundreds  of  stanzas  in 
our  ballads  which  could  never  have  been  improvised 
by  a  throng  of  dancers.  True,  these  could  be  referred 
to  the  refining  and  ennobling  process  of  tradition;  but 
that  again  is  a  guess.  Why  not  take  the  obvious  way, 
giving  the  choral  to  the  chorus,  and  the  poem  to  the 
poet?  The  simple  artistic  refrain,  from  Theocritus  and 
Catullus  to  Spenser,  and  the  more  complicated  forms  of 
roundel  and  triolet  and  ballade,  have  something  to  say 
to  this  sweeping  claim  that  ballad  texts  are  derived  from 
purely  choral  and  popular  origins.  If  we  are  to  give  the 
poem  itself,  whether  directly  or  indirectly,  to  the  chorus, 
—  and  that  is  what  the  definition  by  origins  really 
means,  —  we  must  find  better  reason  for  such  an  award 
than  mere  juxtaposition  of  refrain  and  text.  This  juxta- 
position, to  be  sure,  creates  a  presumption  that  they 
spring  in  the  first  instance  from  one  and  the  same  source; 
but  such  a  presumption  is  offset  by  the  protest  of  com- 


REFRAIN  AND  TEXT  77 

mon  sense  against  the  idea  of  ballads  like  our  "Child 
Waters"  deriving  from  the  improvisation  of  a  choral 
throng.  We  must  face  the  extant,  present  facts.  Take, 
for  example,  "The  Maid  and  the  Palmer,"  ^  a  ballad 
known  in  Faroe,  Danish,  Swedish,  Finnish,  found  in 
the  Percy  manuscript,  and  recollected  from  tradition,  as 
a  fragment,  by  Sir  Walter  Scott.  The  refrain  and  first 
stanza  in  the  Percy  version  may  follow  in  spite  of  pos- 
sible revolt  on  the  part  of  readers :  — 

"The  maid  shee  went  to  the  well  to  washo, 

Lillumwham,  lillumwham! 
The  maid  shee  went  to  the  well  to  washe, 

What  then.?    What  then? 
The  maid  shee  went  to  the  well  to  washe, 
Dew  ffell  off  her  lillywhite  fleshe. 

Grandam  boy,  grandam  boy,  heye! 
Leg  a  derry,  leg  a  merry,  mett,  mer,  whoof)e,  whir! 

Drimance,  larumben,  grandam  boy,  heye  ! ' ' 

Relieved  of  this  "burden,"  we  read  with  interest  the  text 
in  its  rapid  two-line  stanza,  its  dialogue,  and  its  swift 
conclusion;  if  the  burden  were  printed  throughout,  we 
should  not  read  the  ballad  at  all.  Those,  however,  who 
sang  this  ballad,  sang  the  burden  with  delight.  In  Scot- 
land it  had  another  burden,  a  short,  articulate  one,  a 
compromise,  fused  with  the  text.  Now  we  are  just  as 
sure  that  the  origin  of  this  varying  burden  or  refrain, 
purely  choral  in  purpose,  was  different  from  the  origin 
of  the  epic  text,  as  we  are  sure  that  under  certain  con- 
ditions the  refrain  was  the  main  consideration  in  the 

1  No.  21. 


78  THE    BALLAD 

piece.  It  is  quite  possible  that  many  a  stanza  of  inde- 
pendent origin  came  to  be  used  as  refrain  for  a  new 
ballad.  There  is  the  dilemma.  Analogy,  and  even  the 
history  of  ballad  literature,  raise,  as  was  said,  a  fair 
presumption  of  common  choral  origins  for  refrain  and 
text;  the  texts  themselves  often  protest  against  it.  We 
can  come  to  no  conclusion  until  we  get  some  proof  of 
choral  origins  for  the  texts  themselves.^ 

If  we  can  but  lay  both  presumption  and  protest  aside, 
study  the  ballad  as  a  whole  and  in  all  its  range,  text  as 
well  as  refrain,  and  fix  careful  attention  upon  its  struc- 
ture in  every  case,  we  are  confronted  by  certain  facts  which 
will  lead  to  definite  results,  however  they  may  seem  at 
first  to  beget  intolerable  confusion.  We  find  ballads,  and 
parts  of  ballads,  where  the  text  is  really  little  more  than 
a  progressive  refrain.  We  find  ballads  which  combine 
this  dominant  choral  structure  with  simple  and  straight- 
forward but  quite  subordinate  narrative.  We  find,  again, 
fairly  long  ballads  which  are  simple  narrative  through- 
out. And,  lastly,  there  is  the  combination  of  certain 
narrative  ballads  into  a  coherent  epic  poem.^  Chronology 
of  the  usual  kind  has  nothing  to  say  in  this  matter;  the 
epic  poem,  later  and  more  finished  in  form,  is  actually 

of  older  record  than  most  of  the  ballads;  and  we  must 

I 

^  It  should  be  added  that  the  history  of  ballad  refrains  is  still  un- 
written and  presents  enormous  difficulties.  A  theory  is  easily  made;  its 
application  to  facts  such  as  are  presented  by  the  Faroe,  Icelandic,  and 
Scandinavian  burden,  often  longer  than  the  ballad  stanza  itself,  is  diffi- 
cult to  a  degree. 

^  The  Gest  of  Robin  Hood,  no.  117. 


FROM  CHORAL  TO   EPIC  79 

forget  the  tyranny  of  dates.  This  done,  the  confusion 
disappears.  It  is  clear  that  ballad  structure,  like  the 
structure  of  a  language,  is  not  stable;  and  it  can  be 
shown  that  the  evolution  of  the  epic  out  of  the  simpler 
dramatic  form  is  a  thing  of  growth  easily  followed  back 
from  stage  to  stage.  The  making  of  the  original  ballad 
is  a  choral,  dramatic  process  and  treats  a  situation;  the 
traditional  course  of  the  ballad  is  really  an  epic  process 
which  tends  more  and  more  to  treat  a  series  of  events,  a  1 

story. 

Before  the  facts  are  produced  upon  which  this  ex- 
planation of  balladry  must  lean,  it  is  well  to  outline 
the  development  in  general  terms.  What  is  meant  by  an 
"epic  process"?  One  must  not  think  of  mere  epic  ex- 
pansion, such  as  those  eoiae,  or  "like"  poems,  of  Hesiod, 
said  to  have  been  expanded  from  the  separate  items  in  a 
catalogue  of  women,  or  of  medieval  narratives  that  may 
have  been  suggested  by  the  ubi  sunt  formula,  or  of  the 
possible  working  out  of  old  memorial  verses.  Let  us  take 
a  more  familiar  illustration.  When  an  Italian  peasant 
tells  a  comrade,  or  a  group  of  comrades,  about  something 
which  has  lately  befallen  him,  the  onlooking  alien  can 
frequently  get  the  "story"  without  understanding  a 
word  that  is  said.  Action,  often  directly  imitative,  is 
constant;  certain  sentences  recur  again  and  again,  along 
with  their  proper  gestures;  and  the  event  itself  is  re- 
produced in  all  its  phases  as  closely  as  conditions  admit. 
Evidence  without  end  shows  that  communities  in  early 
stages  of  culture,  or  in  remote  places,  like  the  Faroe 


80  THE    BALLAD 

Islands,  where  primitive  conditions  long  survive,  are 
wont  to  reproduce  events  and  scenes  in  this  same  im- 
mediate and  dramatic  fashion;  but  since  a  group,  not 
one  person,  is  "telling  the  story,"  concerted  action  and 
harmonious  words  are  achieved  only  by  a  consent  of 
movement  and  of  voice.  Hence  the  fundamental  fact 
of  rhythm  and  chorus.  The  words,  or  "  text,"  will  be 
primarily  repetition  of  a  pithy,  comprehensively  descrip- 
tive phrase,^  while  the  action,  already  known  to  all,  will 
admit  of  variety  from  the  start.  Taken  in  length  and 
breadth,  such  a  "transcript"  of  events  will  be  best 
called  not  a  story  but  a  situation,  and  it  will  long  be 
limited  by  the  exigencies  of  dramatic  reproduction. 
Coming  back  now  to  our  Italian,  it  is  easy  to  think  of 
him  late  in  life  recalling  and  recounting  to  his  friends 
the  event  in  question;  it  is  easy  to  think  of  his  children 
telling  it  again  to  a  still  later  generation.  But  we  know 
that  in  the  personal  reminiscence,  and  still  more  in  the 
tale  at  second  hand,  dramatic  conditions  will  be  sensibly 
reduced,  and  epic  details  will  spring  up  like  a  young 
forest  about  the  parent  tree.  What  led  to  the  event, 
what  complicated  it  and  heightened  it,  what  came  after 
it,  what  sort  of  man  the  hero  was,  and  what  interplay 
of  character  and  circumstance:  these  are  details,  not  to 
speak  of  reflective  elements  that  wait  so  closely  upon 

^  So  in  songs  of  labor,  and  in  the  games  of  children  which  imitate 
these  songs,  words  exactly  fit  the  action:  "thus  the  farmer  sows  his 
seed"  stands  for  an  older  "thus  we  sow,"  etc.  Compare  the  pretty 
Reapers'  Song  in  Peek's  Old  Wives'  Tale. 


FROM  CHORAL  TO  EPIC  81 

reminiscence,  which  now  will  seem  necessary  to  the  teller 
and  interesting  to  the  audience.  Violently  descriptive 
acts,  as  of  the  immediate  impression,  can  have  no  place; 
and  such  action  as  does  occur  will  be  limited  to  the 
climax,  to  the  critical  situations.  Precisely  such  a  parallel 
as  was  found  in  primitive  literature  for  the  Italian's 
immediate  "story"  is  at  hand  in  more  developed  litera- 
ture for  his  reminiscence  and  for  his  children's  account 
of  it.  So  the  dramatic,  choral  cantilena  of  warriors  who 
fought  their  battles  over  again  in  song  passed  into  the 
chanted  narrative  of  the  early  minstrel.  The  "we" 
of  a  chorus  becomes  the  "he"  or  "they"  of  the  rhap- 
sode. Gaston  Paris  finely  remarks  that  earliest  epic  verse 
both  creates  and  confirms  the  historical  sense  of  a  com-  1 
munity,  tones  down  the  spontaneous,  passionate,  mo- 
mentary elements,  regulates  expression,  and  paves  the 
way  for  epic  of  a  nobler  sort.  Traditional  ballads,  sung 
in  the  homogeneous  communities  of  Europe,  helped  to 
create  the  social  memory;  and  until  this  epic  process 
worked  upon  lyric  and  dramatic  material,  song  was 
evanescent.  Ballads  still  bear  the  mark  of  immediate 
relation  to  their  theme,  so  that  no  particulars  of  time 
or  place  or  person  need  to  be  given.  Statistics,  as  Child 
remarks,  when  too  exact,  are  enough  to  throw  suspicion 
upon  a  ballad.  Le  roi  a  fait  battre  tambour,  —  "the 
king"  is  enough.  Nearer  epic  perfection,  however, 
ballads  must  particularize  with  "Edward  our  King," 
or  fasten  upon  the  type,  as  in  Charlemagne  and  Robin 
Hood.    In  the  earlier  stages  of  this  epic  process,  it  is  in- 


K. 


82  THE    BALLAD 

evitable  that  aristocratic  personages  should  fill  the  stage, 
a  fact  that  has  made  some  students  of  the  ballad  hesitate 
to  allow  it  any  but  aristocratic  origins.  But  the  social 
group  is  naturally  represented  by  its  leaders,  the  prince, 
the  knight,  the  warrior.  It  is  only  in  very  recent  develop- 
ment that  the  humble  or  common  man  is  put  into  the 
foreground  of  story  and  play ;  and  as  a  rule,  conforming 
to  the  fifth  and  last  stage  of  the  development  outlined 
by  Gaston  Paris,  this  hero  is  told  in  prose.  Summing 
\  up  the  epic  process,  then,  we  may^  say  that  it  gradually 
absorbs  the  situation  into  the  narrative,  the  chorus  into 
the  text. 

This  is  surely  a  reasonable  assumption.  It  is  simple 
and  clear.  But  one  must  make  it  even  more  reasonable; 
and  simplicity  is  not  always  a  good  feature  in  explanations 
of  so  complex  an  affair.  The  defect  of  nearly  all  theo- 
ries of  literary  evolution  lies  in  their  attempt  to  make 
an  assumed  movement  or  process  work  steadily,  singly, 
and  untroubled  by  other  influences.  Quite  the  contrary 
must  have  been  the  case.  It  is  preposterous  to  assert 
that  at  such  a  date  and  in  such  a  place  ballads  were  at  the 
a:-position,  and  just  two  centuries  later,  in  such  another 
place,  had  advanced  to  ^/-position.  But  it  is  fair  to 
assume  a  general  progress,  however  crossed  and  baffled 
by  other  forces,  from  direct  impression  rendered  in  a 
"situation"  to  traditional  reminiscence  rendered  in 
narrative;  and  if  the  facts  of  balladry  can  be  shown 
to  conform  to  such  a  general  theory  of  progress,  not,  in- 
deed, in  close  ranks  marching  like  an  army,  not  even  as 


FROM   SITUATION  TO   NARRATIVE  83 

an  infallible  series  of  accretions,  but  as  a  succession  of 
changes  in  structure  revealed  by  actual  specimens  of 
the  ballad  itself,  then  the  principles  of  science  entitle 
that  theory  to  precedence  over  mere  cavil  and  criticism 
without  stay  of  facts  or  warrant  of  research.  For  this 
theory  of  epic  progress  falls  into  line  with  two  great 
tendencies  in  man's  artistic  career,  —  with  that  social, 
gregarious  habit  of  reproducing  events,  which  begins 
in  the  mimetic,  choral  situation,  and  on  its  own  lines 
is  developed  into  triumphs  of  the  later  drama, ^  as  well 
as  with  that  personal,  reminiscent  habit  which  follows 
hero  or  hero-group  through  long  reaches  of  time  and 
many  changes  of  scene  for  the  edification  of  a  listening 
throng.  There  was  in  primitive  life  a  time  to  dance,  and 
there  was  a  time  for  passive  curiosity,  for  getting  informa- 
tion and  reminiscence.  Choral  poetry  in  some  shape, 
and  also  some  form  of  epic,  seem  to  be  of  equal  birth  and 
equally  prosperous  development.  Each  borrows  some- 
thing from  the  other;  drama  must  still  have  its  compli- 
cated story,  no  longer  the  simple  situation  of  its  prime, 
while  story  will  boast  of  its  spectacular,  dramatic  fea- 
tures. Epic,  as  every  one  knows,  cannot  part  with  dia- 
logue; like  Thucydides  in  history,  the  writer  of  novel  or 
romance,  even  of  verse-epic,  gives  as  much  as  he  can  of 
the  actual  speech  of  his  characters.  So  with  the  ballad. 
Dialogue,  easiest  form  of  improvisation,  was  the  evident 
development  from  choral  song,  alternating  with  a  general 
refrain ;  dialogue  and  refrain  make  up  many  a  ballad 
*  See  E.  K.  Chambers,  The  Mediceval  Stage,  for  these  beginnings. 


84  THE    BALLAD 

still.  Repetition,  of  course,  —  for  a  primitive  choral 
must  be  all  repetition, — was  the  protoplasm;  and  it  can 
be  distinctly  traced  in  the  dialogue  of  older  ballad  ver- 
sions. Supplying  the  refrain,  "Sheath  and  Knife"  ends 
thus : — 

" '  There  is  ships  o'  your  father's  sailing  on  the  sea, 
{The  brume  blooms  bonnie  and  says  it  is  fair,) 
That  will  bring  as  good  a  sheath  and  a  knife  unto  thee.' 
{And  we  'II  never  gang  down  to  the  brume  onie  mair.) 

"  '  There  is  ships  o'  my  father's  sailing  on  the  sea, 
{The  brume  blooms  bonnie  and  says  it  is  fair,) 
But  sic  a  sheath  and  a  knife  they  can  never  bring  to  me.' 
{Now  we  'U  never  gang  dovm  to  the  brume  onie  mair.)  " 

This  element  of  dialogue  in  the  ballads  is  very  impor- 
tant, and  deserves  careful  study  for  itself.  It  has  its  own 
hint  of  choral  origins.  Abrupt,  dramatic  openings,  with 
a  dialogue  only  partially  explained,  are  characteristic; 
but  the  choral  influences  are  best  followed  in  a  more 
pervasive  and  definite  guise.  At  this  niore  sweeping 
proof  of  our  proposition  we  are  now  to  look;  but  it  may 
be  said  generally  that  the  course  of  the  popular  ballad 
is  from  a  mimetic  choral  situation,  slowly  detaching 
itself  out  of  the  festal  dance,  and  coming  into  the  remi- 
niscent ways  of  tradition  in  song  and  recital.  Of  that 
primitive  choral  ballad  nothing  is  left  but  the  traces  of 
its  course  and  the  survival  of  its  elements  in  later  stages 
of  evolution.  In  its  original  fluid  and  quite  choral  form, 
the  ballad  could  no  more  be  preserved  as  a  poem  than 
molten  iron  is  preserved  as  such  in  the  casting.     Only 


DIALOGUE  85 

after  it  had  cooled  and  hardened  into  some  consistent 
shape,  in  some  particular  mould,  could  it  be  handed 
down  as  a  definite  ballad,  sung  or  recited  from  age  to 
age.  Naturally  the  reminiscent  elements  increased;  the 
process  of  transfer  from  dramatic  to  epic  influences 
resulted  in  one  instance  and  at  a  very  late  stage  in  the 
"Gest  of  Robin  Hood."  But  the  ways  of  the  English 
and  Scottish  ballad  were  mainly  those  of  a  survival;  it 
had  fallen  on  evil  times,  and  shrank  everywhere  from  the 
onrush  of  letters;  so  that  most  of  our  traditional  versions 
remained  in  a  far  older  stage  of  progress  than  the  "  Gest " 
or  even  than  its  component  ballads,  often,  indeed,  in 
close  neighborhood  to  choral  origins.  —  But  this  is  theory, 
statement.  How  do  we  know  it  all  ?  AVhat  are  the  facts 
which  prove  such  structural  and  specific  changes  along 
the  traditional  line? 

VI.     CHORAL   AND   EPIC  ELEMENTS 

There  is  a  division, easy  to  note, between  the  structure 
in  longer  narrative  ballads,  like  those  of  the  Robin  Hood 
cycle,  the  "  Cheviot,"  and  "  Otterburn,"  and  the  structure 
in  shorter  ballads  of  tradition.  Reversing  the  course,  we 
can  follow  that  epic  process  from  chronicle  to  situation, 
from  what  seems  to  be  a  mature  stage,  marked  by  length 
of  treatment,  rapidity  of  narration,  coherence  of  parts, 
and  individual  recitation,  back  to  a  stage  marked  by 
brevity  of  treatment,  dominance  of  a  situation,  lack  of 
narrative  movement,  and  preponderance  of  choral  sing- 
ing.   In  this  process,  too,  another  element,  which  is  the 


86  THE    BALLAD 

fundamental  element  in  all  primitive  forms  of  poetry, 
should  come  and  does  come  more  and  more  into  promi- 
nence, —  verbal  repetition.  The  maturer  the  stage  of 
poetry,  the  less  repetition  and  the  more  facts;  reversed, 
the  fewer  facts,  the  greater  amount  of  repetition.^  More 
than  this,  the  two  stages  in  ballad  structure,  the  earlier 
of  course  with  some  modification  of  original  choral  ele- 
ments, can  be  found  side  by  side  in  a  single  traditional 
ballad.  It  will  be  profitable  to  study  such  a  ballad  at 
length.  What  has  been  claimed  as  the  story  of  Hero 
and  Leander  appears  in  a  group  of  ballads  widely  dis- 
tributed through  Europe,  but  fullest  and  oldest  in  the 
Low  German.  The  best  version  comes  from  the  neigh- 
borhood of  Paderborn,^  and  the  following  is  a  literal 
translation  of  it. 

"There  once  were  two  kings'-children, 
They  held  one  another  so  hef ! 
They  could  not  come  together, 
The  water  was  far  too  deep. 

"'Sweetheart,  art  thou  not  swimmer? 
Sweetheart,  then  swim  to  me. 
I  will  set  thee  up  two  tapers 
Shall  make  a  light  for  thee.' 

'  The  exceptions  to  this  rule  are  only  apparent,  such  as  recurring 
phrases  of  epic;  refrain  lines  in  artistic  forms  of  lyric,  like  rondeau  or 
triolet,  which  were  really  developed  out  of  popular  iteration;  repetition 
in  dialogue,  as  in  early  French  poetry;  and  the  recent  outbreak  of  repe- 
tition as  a  kind  of  prose  rhythm  in  Maeterlinck  and  D'Annunzio. 

^  Reifferscheid,  Westfalische  Volkslieder,  p.  1.  —  For  French  and 
Italian  forms  see  Le  Flambeau  Eteint,  Crane,  no.  Ill,  and  Nigra, 
p.  68,  with  references  to  the  Spanish. 


HERO   AND   LEANDER  87 

"  A  false  old  witch  she  heard  them 
In  her  sleeping-rooin,  ah  me  ! 
She  went  and  put  out  the  tapers : 
Sweetheart  was  left  in  the  sea. 

"  'T  was  '  on  a  Sunday  morning 

When  folk  were  gay  and  glad,  — 
All  gay  but  the  king's  daughter; 
She  shut  her  eyes  so  red. 

"  '  O  mother,'  said  she,  '  mother. 
My  eyes  they  trouble  me; 
May  I  not  walk  a  little 

By  the  edge  of  the  murmuring  ^  sea  ? ' 

" '  O  daughter,'  said  the  mother, 
'Alone  thou  must  not  go; 
Wake  up  thy  youngest  brother, 
And  he  shall  with  thee  go.' 

" '  Alack,  my  youngest  brother, 
'T  is  such  a  losel  child; 
He  shoots  me  all  the  seafowl 
Along  the  ocean  tide. 

"'And  e'en  if  he  spared  the  tame  ones 
And  only  shot  the  wild. 
Yet  all  the  folk  will  tell  you  — 
'T  was  done  by  the  king's  child. 

*  Et  was,  matching  the  et  wasen  of  the  first  stanza.  Here  is  the  fresh 
start.  For  we  now  come  to  the  second  part,  made  up  of  two  situations; 
with  the  coherence  of  these,  compare  a  similar  case  in  The  Lass  of 
Rock  Royal  (Child,  no.  76)  and  The  Mother's  Malison,  or  Clyde's  Water 
(Child,  no.  216).   See  note  on  p.  90,  below. 

^  "  Murmuring"  is  artistic.  Swedish  versions  make  her  ask  first  to  go 
"  walk  in  the  garden,"  and  then '"  to  the  white  sea-strand,"  where  "  white" 
matches  our  adjective  here.  The  Frisian  has  simply  "  by  the  edge  of 
the  sea." 


88  THE    BALLAD 

"'O  mother,'  said  she,  'mother, 
My  eyes  they  trouble  me; 
May  I  not  walk  a  little 

By  the  edge  of  the  murmuring  sea?' 

*"  O  daughter,'  said  the  mother, 
'Alone  thou  must  not  go; 
■-       Wake  up  thy  youngest  sister. 
And  she  shall  with  thee  go.' 

" '  Alack,  my  youngest  sister, 
'T  is  such  a  losel  child. 
She  plucks  me  all  the  flowers 
Along  the  ocean  tide. 

•"And  e'en  if  she  spared  the  tame  ones. 
And  only  plucked  the  wild. 
Yet  all  the  folk  will  tell  you  — 
'T  was  done  by  the  king's  child. 

*"0  mother,'  said  she,  'mother. 
My  heart  is  sore  in  me: 
Let  others  go  to  the  churches, 
I  will  pray  by  the  murmuring  sea.' 

"On  her  head,  then,  the  king's  daughter 
She  set  her  golden  crown. 
She  put  upon  her  finger 

A  ring  of  the  diamond  stone.* 

"  To  the  church  went  up  the  mother. 
To  the  sea  the  daughter  went  down; 

*  It  is  interesting  to  note  the  different  kinds  of  repetition.  Swedish 
versions  describe  the  heroine's  dress;  when  she  asks  leave  to  go  to  the 
garden,  and  then  to  the  sea,  she  wears  "the  scarlet  white,  likewise  the 
scarlet  blue;"  when  she  goes  to  the  shore,  it  is  "in  scarlet  white,  likewise 
in  scarlet  black."  One  frequently  finds  the  demand  of  structure  or  of 
rhythm  leading  thus  to  a  kind  of  verbal  confusion. 


HERO   AND   LEANDER  89 

She  walked  so  long  by  the  water 
The  fisherman  she  found. 

"'O  fisher,  dearest  fisher. 

Great  wage  can  now  be  won; 
Set  me  your  nets  in  the  water. 
And  fish  me  the  king's  son.' 

"  He  set  his  nets  in  the  water, 

The  sinkers  sank  to  the  ground; 
He  fished  and  he  fished  so  truly, 
'T  was  the  king's  son  that  he  found. 

*'  And  then  took  the  king's  daughter 

From  her  head  her  golden  crown,  — 
'Lo  there,  O  noble  fisher. 

Thy  wage  I  pay  thee  down.' 

"  She  drew  from  off  her  finger 

Her  ring  of  the  diamond  stone,  — 
'Lo  there,  O  noble  fisher. 

Thy  wage  I  pay  thee  down.' 

"  And  in  her  arms  she  clasped  him, 
The  king's  son,  woe  to  tell. 
And  sprang  with  him  into  the  billows: 
'O  father,  O  mother,  farewell!'" 

We  have  in  this  ballad  two  well-marked  and  clearly 
divided  parts,  although  the  whole  makes  a  perfectly 
good  story.  The  first  part  is  a  complete,  straightforward 
narrative,  very  brief;  the  second  part  is  a  kind  of  sup- 
plement, a  protracted  situation,  and  very  long.  Swedish 
versions,  to  be  sure,  give  the  first  part  in  greater  detail: 
the  swimmer's  start  is  described,  his  weariness,  his  con- 
fusion when  the  lights  go  out.    A  page  of  the  court  sees 


90  THE    BALLAD 

him  drown,  and  brings  the  news.  Execration,  in  an 
"aside,"  disposes  of  the  witch  for  time  and  eternity. 
But  short  or  long,  nothing  of  this  first  part,  the  narrative, 
is  really  needed  for  the  second  part,  the  situation,  save 
the  drowned  lover;  and  any  lover,  provided  he  is  dis- 
tinctly drowned,  will  serve.  Juliet  far  outshines  Romeo. 
Nor,  again,  is  there  so  much  interest  in  the  narrative  part 
as  in  the  supplement,  the  situation  part,  which  really 
consists  of  two  situations  closely  joined  by  motive,  time, 
action.  In  many  cases  this  arrangement,  which  is  typical 
in  most  of  the  short  English  ballads,  could  be  called  by 
some  such  name  as  "the  split  situation."  —  not  eupho- 
nious, to  be  sure,  but  convenient.  We  shall  often  meet 
it.^  Going  back  to  the  Hero  and  Leander  case,  we  find 
that  as  between  narrative  and  situation,  the  main  divi- 
sions of  the  ballad,  not  only  is  the  suture  evident,  but  the 
style  and  structure  of  the  second  part  mark  it  off  from 
the  first  part.  The  first  part  is  fairly  epic,  telling  its 
straightforward  story;  the  second  part  is  full  of  what 
may  be  called  incremental  repetition.  There  is  nothing 
straightforward  about  it ;    the  story,  if  that  word  may  be 

*  This  "split  situation"  marks  the  first  breach  of  the  dramatic 
unity  of  time,  and  the  entering  wedge  of  narrative.  The  trail  of  it  can 
be  followed  even  into  long  and  awkward  chronicle  ballads  like  Hugh 
Spencer  (no.  158)  and  Sir  Andrew  Barton  (no.  167);  in  a  short  ballad, 
The  Great  Silkie  (no.  113),  the  situation  has  an  effective  combination 
with  retrospect  and  prospect,  the  latter  worthy  of  Heine.  Ordinarily 
the  "split  situation"  appears  in  such  ballads  as  nos.  76  and  216, 
mentioned  above,  p.  87,  note.  Compare  also  Prince  Heathen  (no.  104), 
hardly  a  "fragment"  as  Child  calls  it,  the  popular  Lord  Lovel  (no.  75), 
and  many  ballads  of  the  same  plan. 


LEAPING   AND    LINGERING  91 

used,  keeps  lingering,  still  lingering,  and  then  leaps  to  a 
new  part  somewhat  like  those  clocks  whose  hands  point 
only  to  the  five-minute  intervals  on  the  dial.  A  great 
deal  has  been  made  of  this  leaping,  springing  movement 
of  ballads,  the  omission  of  details,  the  ignoring  of  con-  J 
nective  and  explanatory  facts,  the  seven-league  stride 
over  stretches  of  time  and  place  which  in  regular  epic 
would  claim  pages  of  elaborate  narrative.  Far  too  little, 
on  the  other  hand,  has  been  made  of  the  lingering,  of 
the  succession  of  stanzas  or  of  verses,  mainly  in  triads, 
which  are  identical  save  for  one  or  two  pivotal  words, ^ 
delaying  and  almost  pausing  on  the  almost  pausing 
action,  and  marking  a  new  phase  in  the  grouping  of 
persons  and  events.  And  practically  nothing  at  all  has 
been  made  of  the  combination  of  these  two  features  as 
a  formula  of  the  situation-ballad  which  points  unerringly/ 
back  to  choral  conditions,  to  a  dance  where  the  crowd 
moves  to  its  own  singing,  and  where  the  song,  mainly 
repetition,  got  its  matter  from  successive  stages  or  shifts 
of  what  may  be  called  a  situation  rather  than  a  story. 
Literal  repetition  yielded,  for  the  sake  of  progress,  to 
this  repetition  with  increments,  developing  the  situation; 
and  incremental  repetition  came  soon  to  be  the,  close 
pattern  of  ballad  stuff.  Refrains  may  stay  or  vanish; 
in  the  record  they  cease  to  appeal  to  voice  and  ear,  and 

'  Troubling  eyes  and  the  wish  to  walk  —  repeated,  with  a  slight 
change  in  the  answers  from  "brother"  to  "sister,"  in  two  stanzas  — 
shift  in  the  third  increment  of  the  triad  to  sore  heart  and  the  need  to 
pray.    The  second  of  the  two  situations  condenses  the  repetition. 


92  THE    BALLAD 

seem  a  waste  of  energy;  but  incremental  repetition 
can  wane  only  by  the  slow  process  of  "making  over," 
by  excision  and  connection,  from  one  version  to  an- 
other. Hence  its  great  significance.  It  supplies  a  visible 
link  between  oldest  choral  repetition  and  actual  text; 
and  in  the  ballad  just  quoted  it  furnishes,  now  by  its 
presence  and  now  by  its  absence,  a  capital  illustration 
of  the  evolution  of  epic  out  of  choral  conditions. 

For  it  is  beyond  doubt  that  the  situation  in  ballads 
is  older,  more  characteristic,  and  more  essential,  than  the 
unmixed,  smooth-flowing  narrative.  As  was  pointed  out 
in  the  preceding  section,  all  ballads  of  tradition  carry  with 
them  the  marks  of  two  great  interests  that  have  ever 
been  active  on  the  aesthetic  side  of  man's  life.  Oi 
the  natural  desire  of  everybody  to  hear  a  good  story; 
the  other  that  equally  natural  desire  of  the  normal  man  to 
gratify  his  social  and  emotional  propensities  by  singing, 
dancing,  and  enacting,  along  with  his  fellows,  a  familiar  or 
exciting  situation.  The  adjustment  of  these  two  claims 
is  neither  simple  combination,  as  in  our  "Hero  and 
Leander,"  nor  that  cheerful  but  clumsy  fusion  found 
in  the  Shetland  traditional  ballad  of  "King  Orfeo."  ^  It 
is  a  matter  of  evolution;  choral  and  dramatic  elements 
ruled  in  earliest  stages,  while  epic  prevails  at  the  end. 
In  the  ballad  now  under  consideration,  the  epic  preface 
is  a  summary,  an  accretion,^  a  later  thought,  and  there- 
fore can  easily  fall  away.     It  does  fall  away.     Many 

'  No.  19. 

^  See  note  on  Two  Brothers,  below,  p.  123. 


)ne  isj 
",  ancJ 


REPETITION  93 

versions  drop  it  altogether,  or  rather,  as  Reifferscheid 

concedes,  never  had  it  to  drop.    Abrahamson,  who  heard 

this  ballad  sung  by  a  housemaid  in  Denmark  about  the 

year  1750,  says  that  she  always  began  with  the  daughter's 

request,  with  abrupt  dialogue  of  the  situation,  and  with 

no  preliminary  narrative.     In  like  manner  the  Lettish 

version  begins :  — 

"Ah,  how  sore  my  head  is  aching. 
Ah,  my  head  is  aching  sore;  — 
Let  me,  mother,  darling  mother. 
Let  me  wander  by  the  shore." 

Such,  too,  is  the  opening  of  many  other  versions. 

This  addition  of  epic  details  to  verse  which  in  the  first 

instance  springs  from  a  choral  and  ceremonial  source,  is 

familiar  upon  other  fields.    So  common  is  repetition  in  all 

religious  rites,  that  its  vogue  in  poetry  is  now  and  then 

ascribed  to  a  liturgical  source  rather  than  to  the  obvious 

communal  and  festal  influence.    It  is  the  choral,  public,, 

communal  origin  of  all  liturgies  that  explains  their  repe-j 

tition ;  and  their  epic  part  must  be  explained  along  with 

the  epic  of  ballads.    Charms  or  incantations  have  a  brief 

narrative  introduction,  a  kind  of  Olympian  credential, 

often  detachable  from  the  charm  itself;    but  in  such  a 

ritual  as  the  hymn  of  the  Arval  Brothers  in  Rome,  all  is 

choral  and  fairly  resonant  with  the  steps  of  the  dance. 

There  can  be  no  question  that  this  is  the  original  form; 

why  should  narrative  come  into  the  ancient  rite  ?    It  is 

worth  noting,  too,  that  the  inscription  which  preserves 

this  hymn,  in  its  invocation  to  Mars,  gives  most  of  the 

verses  three  times  in  laborious  repetition ;   iteration  must 


94  THE    BALLAD 

have  been  a  serious  matter  when  so  much  of  it  had  to 
be  cut  in  stone.  All  poetry  which  begins  in  these  public 
rites,  in  funeral  and  marriage  and  whatever  festal  occa- 
sion, has  an  insistent  note  of  repetition,  at  first  literal 
and  then  incremental.  As  one  recedes  from  choral  con- 
ditions, direct  reference  to  the  dance,  as  in  the  Arval 
Hymn  — 

"  Leap  o'er  the  threshold  !    Halt !    Now  beat  the  ground  ! "  — 

is  apt  to  fall  away,  and  narrative  comes  in  to  explain 
and  justify  the  rite  itself.  Precisely  so  with  old  ritual  and 
what  passes  as  its  myth,  with  magic  ceremonies,  mainly 
a  mimetic  dance,  and  the  legend  or  legends  which  explain 
the  rite  in  epic  fashion  and  give  a  reason  for  the  faith 
that  is  in  it.  The  primacy  of  ritual  is  sustained  by  a 
mass  of  ethnological  evidence.  Often  several  legends  are 
found  to  explain  the  same  ceremony;  and  trustworthy 
authorities  regard  the  former  as  derived  from  the  latter.^ 
Beatty's  study  of  the  St.  George  Plays  in  England  makes 
it  almost  certain  that  the  underlying  and  original  func- 
tion was  a  magic,  dramatic  ritual,  full  of  dance,  song, 
and  mimetic  action,  to  symbolize  the  awakening  of  the 
powers  of  nature.  With  Christianity  the  legend,  such  as 
it  was,  needed  a  new  form;  and  the  story  of  St.  George 
was  adapted  to  the  old  play,  changing  so  far  to  fit  the 
original  rite  as  to  make  the  hero  first  a  victim  to  hostile 
powers  and  then  the  subject  of  a  revival  or  resurrection. 
Frazer,  in  his  "Golden  Bough,"  has  brought  abundant 
evidence  for  our  general  thesis.     A  myth   is  never  the 

'  See  Beatty,  work  quoted,  pp.  313,  323.    And  see  above,  p.  45. 


RITUAL    BEFORE    MYTH  95 

basis  of  ceremony,  —  epic,  in  other  words,  never  gave 
birth_in  the  first  instance  to  drama.  The  dramatic  fact 
may  be  developed  by  the  epic  process  into  narrative  of 
whatever  kind;  and  myth  is  a  projection  of  early  rites. 
Such  was  also  the  case  with  ritual  of  a  later  and  more 
domestic  sort.  The  old  Corsican  funeral  songs  were 
called  not  only  lamenti,  but  ballati,  because  of  the  dance 
that  modern  generations  know  no  more.  "Make  wide 
the  circle,"  ran  an  ancient  lament,  "and  dance  the  cara- 
colu;  for  this  sorrow  is  very  sore."  The  dance  vanished, 
but  the  vocero  remained;  and  it  long  held  the  incre- 
mental repetition  of  choral  grief.  Later  rose  the  epic 
or  historic  elegy,  the  panegyric.  Traces  faint  enough  but 
sure  of  this  custom  can  be  found  in  our  own  ballads.  A 
kind  of  vocero,  with  hauntimg  refrain  and  the  usual  epic, 
explanatory  stanzas,  is  to  be  found  in  "Bonny  James 
Campbell;"^  while  incremental  repetition  marks  the 
choral  part  of  "The  Bonny  Earl  of  Murray," ^  in  no 
sense  a  primitive  or  even  unsophisticated  ballad,  but  in- 
teresting for  the  detachment  of  narrative  from  situation 
and  for  the  echo  of  an  old  lament. 

"  Ye  Highlands  and  ye  Lawlands, 
Oh  where  hae  ye  been  ? 
They  have  slain  the  Earl  of  Murray 
And  they  layd  him  on  the  green. 

" '  Now  wae  be  to  thee,  Huntly  ! 
And  wherefore  did  you  sae? 

'  Child,  no.  210.  The  wife's  lament,  though  different  in  two  versions, 
is  characteristic  of  the  real  vocero. 
2  No.  181. 


96  THE    BALLAD 

I  bade  you  bring  him  wi'  you. 
But  forbade  you  him  to  slay.'  * 

"  He  was  a  hraw  gallant. 
And  he  rid  at  the  ring; 
And  the  bonny  Earl  of  Murray, 
Oh  he  might  have  been  a  king  I 

"  He  was  a  braw  gallant. 
And  he  playd  at  the  ba\- 
And  the  bonny  Earl  of  Murray 
Was  the  flower  amang  them  a'. 

"He  was  a  braw  gallant. 

And  he  playd  at  the  glove; 

And  the  bonny  Earl  of  Murray, 

Oh  lie  was  the  queen^s  love. 

'•  Oh  lang  will  his  lady 

Look  o'er  the  Castle  Down, 
Ere  she  see  the  Earl  of  Murray 

Come  sounding  through  the  town."  ^ 

We  shall  also  see  how  the  riddle,  at  first  mere  question 
and  answer  in  the  circle  of  dancing  folk,  is  taken  out  of  its 
first  setting  and  embodied  in  a  little  epic  or  tale.  One  does 
not  need,  however,  to  rely  on  these  analogies  to  show  that 
the  epic  or  narrative  part  of  ballads  is  detachable  from 

'  This  dramatic  turn  in  the  narrative  is  supposed  to  be  spoken  by  the 
king  to  Huntly,  whose  followers  killed  the  Earl  in  February,  1592. 

^  The  smoothness  and  pathos  of  the  ballad,  and  the  source  of  it  in 
Ramsay's  Tea-Table  Miscellany,  give  it  a  sophisticated  if  elegant  note, 
as  compared  with  the  version  B  (from  recitation),  with  its  homely  vocero 
touch  at  the  end.  Nevertheless,  the  triad  and  the  incremental  repetition 
are  of  the  true  traditional  type,  and  the  groundwork  of  the  ballad  is  both 
popular  and  of  genuine,  if  remote,  choral  origin. 


SURVIVALS   OF   THE    DANCE  97 

the  older  situation,  and  so  to  prove  that  the  ballad  of 
situation  is  offspring  of  the  festal  dance.  The  latter  pro- 
cess stands  out  clearly  for  itself.  In  the  long  reaches  of 
time,  to  be  sure,  very  few  ballads  that  were  actually  com- 
posed at  the  dance  have  come  down  to  us.  Two  considera- 
tions should  always  be  borne  in  mind.  Such  a  ballad, 
apart  from  its  occasion,  would  have  little  of  what  we  call 
literary  merit,  and  would  not  commend  itself  for  written 
record;  and  where  it  did  find  record,  the  tendency  to 
suppress  repetitions  would  be  almost  irresistible.  The 
only  real  preservative  of  this  choral  repetition  is  when  it 
passes  into  the  actual  structure  of  the  ballad  and  so  for  a 
long  time  defies  the  epic  impulses  of  smoothness  and  pro- 
portion. Nevertheless,  traces  of  actual  choral  repetition 
can  be  found.  Not  only  is  it  certain  that  ballads  were 
made  in  the  festal  throng;  some  survive  that  were  used 
for  the  dance,  and  these  afford  in  their  structure  clear 
evidence  of  actual  dramatic  and  choral  origin.  The 
Ditmarsh  folk  of  Holstein,  whose  old  dances  have  been 
carefully  described,^  had  a  certain  springeltanz  which, 
despite  a  corrupted  and  abbreviated  text,  shows  incre- 
mental repetition  of  the  type  just  noted,  and  a  situation 

'  Neocorus,  Chronik,  ed.  Dahlmann,  i,  177,  who  says  the  people  have 
fitted  nearly  all  their  songs  to  the  dance  "in  order  to  remember  them 
better"  and  keep  them  current,  gives  this  interesting  account.  The 
"foresinger"  plays  a  great  part,  with  choral  answer  and  refrain;  but 
there  are  whole  ballads  where  all  the  persons  sing  as  they  dance.  This 
is  precisely  the  case  with  old  French  dances;  but  while  the  latter  are  all 
"aristocratic"  to  the  point  of  making  their  modern  investigators  doubt 
the  existence  of  "popular"  customs, here  are  genuine  communal  dances 
and  songs  of  the  '"folk."    See  above,  p.  2k 


98  THE    BALLAD 

akin  to  the  first  situation  of  the  second  part  of  the  Hero 
and  Leander  ballad.  It  is  the  formula  of  "asking  per- 
mission "  to  go  somewhere  or  to  do  something/  —  in  this 
case,  to  join  the  festal  dance  itself. 

" '  The  summer  days  are  coming, 
The  pleasant  summer  tide. 
And  lasses  and  lads  are  dancing 
In  the  dale,'  —  so  spake  the  wife. 

" '  Dear  mother,  little  mother, 

To  the  evening  dance  I'd  go. 
Where  I  hear  the  gay  drums  beating. 
Where  I  hear  the  pipers  blow.' 

" '  O  nay,  my  daughter,  never  that, 

To  sleep  thou 'It  go,  thou 'It  go.  .  .  .' 


" '  O  mother  mine,  that  makes  me  woe, 
That  makes  me  woebegone; 
And  come  I  not  to  the  evening  dance, 
To  death  I  would  be  done.' 

" '  Nay,  nay,  O  nay,  my  daughter. 
Alone  thou  shalt  not  go; 

'  Getting  permission  to  go  and  visit  a  dangerous  gallant  or  other 
fascinating  person  is  found  in  the  continental  versions  of  the  Lady 
Isabel  group;  see  Child,  i,  26,  and  "relative-climax,"  below,  p.  102. 
Compare  also  for  English  ballads  the  incremental  repetition  of  this 
formula  in  The  Cruel  Brother  (no.  11)  and  even  in  the  less  popu- 
lar class  like  Katharine  Jaffray  (no.  221).  It  is  effectively  used  in  tragic 
ballads  represented  by  the  German  Christinchen  ging  in'ri  Garten, 
Reifferscheid,  no.  2,  and  in  the  whole  class  of  which  The  Maid  Freed 
from  the  Gallows  (Child,  no.  95)  is  type. 


HOLSTEIN    SPRINGELTANZ  99 

But  waken  up  thy  brother 
And  let  him  with  thee  go.' 

" '  My  brother  is  young,  is  but  a  child. 
And  him  I'll  never  wake; 
I'd  rather  rouse  another  man 
With  whom  I'm  fain  to  speak.' " 

Further  escort  was  doubtless  suggested  and  declined;  but 
the  fact  remains  that  here,  in  an  actual  dancing  ballad, 
however  imperfectly  recorded,  is  the  situation,  and  prac- 
tically nothing  more.  The  mother  prophesies  evil,  but 
submits,  —  reminding  one  of  the  mother  in  Her  Nithart's 
verses;  ^  and  the  daughter  merely  goes  to  the  dance, 
meets  a  knight,  and  is  kissed  and  claimed  as  partner  by 
him.  That  is  all  this  dance-ballad  needed.  In  a  Danish 
version,^  however,  which  has  lost  its  connection  with  the 
actual  dance  and  come  to  serve  other  interests  in  the 
course  of  tradition,  narrative  and  tragedy  triumph.  It  is 
the  king  who  meets  fair  Signelille;  the  queen  hears,  then 
sees  her;  and  promptly  poisons  her  with  a  cup  of  wine. 
A  story,  from  whatever  source,  has  first  attached  itself  to 

'  Deutsche  Liederdichter  des  12-14  Jhdts.,  3d  ed.,  p.  104.    Note  the 
daughter's  wish :  — 

"  Mother,  let  me  wend 
Afield  -with  the  merry  band, 
And  let  me  dance  the  rhig  ! 
'T  is  long  since  I  have  heard  the  girls 
New  ditties  sing." 

That  is,  they  are  singing  new  songs  at  the  dance,  after  the  medieval 
fashion. 

^  Grundtvig,  iii,  165.    There  is  a  hint  of  this  old  "choosing  partners" 
motive  at  the  end  of  the  Revesby  Sword  Play. 


100  THE    BALLAD 

this  simple  situation,  and  then  has  dominated  it.  Such  a 
development  of  epic  out  of  dramatic  and  choral  interests 
is  natural  enough,  and  can  often  explain  differences 
between  related  versions  of  a  given  ballad.  Thus  "  The 
Bonny  Lass  of  Anglesey,"  ^  in  its  two  Scottish  versions,  is 
mainly  narrative  and  has  only  traces  of  incremental  repe- 
tition; the  lass  tires  out  a  number  of  dancers  in  a  match 
made  by  the  king,  and  wins  her  "fifteen  ploughs,"  her 
mill,  and  for  husband  the  fairest  knight  in  the  court.  In 
the  corresponding  Danish  ballad,^  however,  the  main 
situation  is  the  dance  itself,  where  a  king's  son  offers  one 
gift  after  the  other,  only  to  be  refused,  until  he  pledges 
honor  and  troth.  Then  follows  the  story,  still,  to  be  sure, 
with  incremental  repetition  and  the  refrain  of  a  dancing 
ballad,  but  with  distinctly  epic  interest  and  in  this  case 
a  very  romantic  conclusion.^  Now  the  actual  stories  differ 
considerably  in  what  seem  to  be  varying  versions  under 
different  names;  while  the  dance,  as  Grundtvig  says, 
may  be  regarded  as  the  characteristic  and  stable  feature, 
—  one  may  add,  the  original  feature.  No  better  case  of 
incremental  repetition,  along  with  refrain,^  as  sole  mate- 
rial of  the  ballad,  could  be  found  than  in  this  first  half, 
which  echoes  the  very  steps  and  motions  of  the  dance,  — 

"'  Christine,  Christine,  tread  a  measure  for  me ! 
A  silken  sark  I  will  give  to  thee.' 

»  Child,  no.  220. 

^  Liden  Kirstins  Dans,  Grundtvig,  v,  119  f. 

^  Compare  the  romantic  conclusion  of  TcemingspiUet,  below,  p.  118. 

*  Omitted  in  the  verses  quoted  here. 


DANCE   AND    DIALOGUE  101 

"  '  A  silken  sark  I  can  get  me  here, 

But  I'll  not  dance  with  the  Prince  this  year.' 

"  '  Christine,  Christine,  tread  a  measure  for  me. 
Silver-clasped  shoes  I  will  give  to  thee.' 

" '  Silver-clasped  shoes  I  can  get,'  "  etc. 

The  same  refusal,  in  the  same  words;  and  next  a  clasp 
of  gold,  half  of  a  gold  ring,  a  pair  of  silver-hilted  knives, 
each  with  the  refusal  in  answer,  —  and  then  "  honor  and 
troth."  Knowing  how  common  is  the  gift  of  improvisation 
with  unspoiled  rural  folk  everywhere,  one  sees  how  easily 
this  sort  of  dialogue  could  spring  up  at  the  dance,  stayed 
upon  a  lively  refrain,  and  ending  with  the  end  of  the  par- 
ticular situation.  The  next  departure  is  epic  and  tradi- 
tional, —  a  story  to  explain  or  comment  on  the  situation. 
Such  is  the  case  in  our  Danish  ballad.  In  the  Scottish 
version  situation  and  story  are  fused  to  the  loss  of  nearly 
all  the  choral  features;  but  very  different  is  the  case  with 
a  ballad  of  no  aesthetic  value,  indeed,  but  of  the  highest 
importance  for  the  significance  of  its  dramatic  situation 
and  its  primitive  form  of  structure,  —  "  The  Maid  Freed 
from  the  Gallows."  ^  Here  one  can  really  think  himself 
with  the  earliest  ballad-makers.  The  song  is  formed  by 
incremental  repetition  alone;  it  has  no  epic  preface,  no 
narrative,  but  such  as  can  be  guessed  from  the  situation; 
it  is  dramatic  from  beginning  to  end.    It  has  no  refrain, 

'  Child,  no.  95.  Professor  Kittredge,  in  the  one-volume  ed.,  p.  xxv, 
uses  an  American  version  of  this  ballad  to  show  how  easily  mere  choral 
singing  of  a  crowd,  with  slightest  touch  of  invention,  could  improvise  a 
ballad. 


102  THE    BALLAD 

and  needs  none;  the  whole  piece  might  be  called  an 
incremental  refrain  in  dialogue.  It  deals  with  a  situation, 
common  to  many  ballads  of  Europe,  which  brings  out 
the  "climax  of  relatives; "  ^  and  it  is  of  course  derived,  in 
the  length  and  breadth  of  its  vogue,  from  oral  tradition. 

"  'O  good  Lord  Judge,  and  sweet  Lord  Judge, 
Peace  for  a  little  while  ! 
Methinks  I  see  my  own  father 
Come  riding  by  the  stile. 

"  '  Oh  father,  oh  father,  a  little  of  your  gold, 
And  likewise  of  your  fee  ! 
To  keep  my  body  from  yonder  grave 
And  my  neck  from  the  gallows-tree.' 

" '  None  of  my  gold  now  shall  you  have. 
Nor  likewise  of  my  fee; 
For  I  am  come  to  see  you  hang'd. 
And  hanged  you  shall  be.' 

"  '  O  good  Lord  Judge,  and  sweet  Lord  Judge, 
Peace  for  a  little  while  ! 
Methinks  I  see  my  own  mother 
Come  riding  by  the  stile. 

"  '  O  mother,  O  mother,  a  little  of  your  gold. 
And  likewise  of  your  fee. 
To  keep  my  body  from  yonder  grave. 
And  my  neck  from  the  gallows  tree.' 

" '  None  of  my  gold  now  shall  you  have. 
Nor  likewise  of  my  fee; 
For  I  am  come  to  see  you  hang'd. 
And  hanged  you  shall  be.'  " 

'  See  below,  pp.  120  ff. 


MAID   FREED   FROM   GALLOWS  103 

Two  more  triads  deal  precisely  in  the  same  way  with 
sister  and  brother;  it  is  clear  that  this  line  could  stretch 
farther  than  the  eight  kings  in  "Macbeth,"  and  that  no 
faintest  spark  of  "invention"  is  needed  for  such  a  song 
once  the  first  stanzas  are  achieved.  Only  its  definite  situa- 
tion, its  grouping  of  persons,  its  distinct  if  monotonous 
narrative  progress,  and  the  climax,  presently  to  be 
quoted,  sunder  it  from  the  great  mass  of  cumulative 
songs,  some  of  which  serve  the  same  purpose  of  a  festal 
dance.  ^  But  when  the  singer  chose,  or  the  supply  of  rela- 
tives ceased,  this  little  dramatic  ballad  of  a  situation 
found  its  end  to  general  satisfaction,  —  as  follows:  — 

" '  O  good  Lord  Judge,  and  sweet  Lord  Judge, 
Peace  for  a  little  while  ! 
Math  inks  I  see  my  own  true  love 
Come  riding  by  the  stile. 

"'O  true  love,  O  true  love,  a  little  of  your  gold, 
And  likewise  of  your  fee, 

*  These  cumulative  songs  are  conceded  generally  to  the  popular  muse. 
Most  of  them  are  mere  repetition  save  for  a  single  increment  to  the 
stanza.  See  Beginnings  of  Poetry,  pp.  201  ff .  As  for  ballads,  version  K 
of  Lamkin  (Child,  no.  93,  ii,  333  f.)  can  be  continued  as  long  as  female 
names  will  last.  No.  274,  Our  Goodman,  is  a  jocular  cumulative  ballad; 
it  is  highly  interesting  to  note  (Child,  v,  90)  that  "the  lace-makers  of 
Vorey  are  wont  to  recite  or  sing  [the  counterpart  of]  this  ballad  winter 
evenings  as  a  little  drama."  So,  too,  in  Lorraine  and  in  Provence.  The 
old  dancing-song  of  the  East  Frisians  is  an  extremely  interesting  case  of 
cumulative  repetition  (cock,  ox,  cat,  dog,  dove)  used  in  figures  of  the 
dance,  as  distinguished  from  the  incremental  repetition  of  this  Maid 
Freed  from  the  Gallows.  The  latter  is  more  dramatic,  and  is  farther 
removed  from  the  memory-tests  of  cumulative  verse.  —  See  Buske  di 
Remmer  in  Bohme,  Liederbuch,  pp.  378  S. 


104  THE    BALLAD 

To  save  my  body  from  yonder  grave 
And  my  neck  from  the  gallows  tree.' 

" '  Some  of  my  gold  now  shall  you  have, 
And  likewise  of  my  fee; 
For  I  am  come  to  see  you  sav'd 
And  saved  you  shall  be.'  "  ^ 

This  ballad  of  "  The  Maid  Freed  from  the  Gallows," 
in  its  European  variants,  is  extraordinarily  widespread 
and  popular;  ^  in  remote  Finland  there  are  fifty  versions 
of  it.  Now  and  then  a  narrative  has  been  prefixed  to 
explain  the  situation,  as  in  the  long  Sicilian  version;  but 
the  core  of  the  thing  is  the  situation  itself.  The  setting 
varies  at  will.  A  girl  is  drowning,  or  is  to  be  carried  off 
by  pirates;  she  appeals  vainly  to  father,  brother,  sister, 
mother,  but  all  refuse  to  save  her,  to  ransom  her,  to  sell  a 
red  coat,  a  house,  a  castle,  what  not;  and  they  tell  the 
sailors  to  "let  her  drown,"  until  finally  the  lover  is  willing 
to  sell  himself  as  slave  to  the  oar  and  so  redeem  his  sweet- 
heart. Whatever  the  details,  incremental  structure,  com- 
bined with  the  climax  of  relatives,  is  the  essential  and 

*  This  happy  ending  commended  itself  in  two  versions  of  Mary 
Hamilton  (no.  173),  turning  the  edge  of  tragedy.  In  X,  however,  the 
true-love  refuses,  a  mere  interlude,  and  the  ballad  has  its  usual  end. 
An  inversion  of  this  same  situation,  with  even  clearer  and  quite  persistent 
reference  to  choral  conditions,  is  La  Ballerina,  an  Italian  ballad,  where 
a  woman  will  not  stop  dancing  "  for  the  reported  death  of  father,  mother, 
brother,  sister,  husband,  but  when  told  that  her  boy  is  dead,  asks  the 
players  to  cease."  —  Child,  v,  231. 

'  See  Child,  iii,  516;  v,  90,  231;  Reifferscheid,  notes  to  O  Schip- 
mann,  pp.  138  ff.;  and  the  discussion  by  Liebrecht,  Zur  Volkskunde, 
pp.  235  f. 


THE    PARENT    DANCE  105 

invariable  element;  choral  origins  are  made  certain  by 
internal  evidence,  by  traditional  connection  with  the 
dance,  and  by  the  important  test  of  survival.  For  this 
ballad  in  at  least  one  of  its  English  versions,  in  a  Faroe 
version,  and  in  sundered  groups  like  the  Danish  and  the 
Magyar,  is  still  used  as  an  actual  game  or  dance,  now  for 
children  and  now  for  older  folk.* 

Here  is  the  real  connecting  link  between  ballads  as  they 
appear  in  our  collections  and  that  choral,  communal 
origin  towards  which  so  many  probabilities  have  pointed. 
The  process  cannot  be  reversed.  To  make  the  dance  or 
game  a  terminal  and  accidental  application  of  verse 
written  for  epic  purposes  is  to  ignore  obvious  facts.  Bal- 
lads named  from  the  dance  are  so  named  by  origins  and 
not  by  destination.  In  late  stages  of  development,  to  be 
sure,  a  popular  play,  a  folk  drama,  as  it  is  called,  could  be 
founded  on  a  popular  ballad,  as  in  the  fragment,  printed 
by  Professor  Child  from  a  manuscript  older  than  1475, 
and  evidently  based  on  the  ballad  of  "Robin  Hood  and 
Guy  of  Gisborne."  But  this  "dramatic  piece"  is  at  the 
end  of  a  long  process  of  evolution  in  folk  plays  and,  like 
the  ballad  itself,  has  few  if  any  choral  elements  left.^ 

'  In  the  Faroe  version,  still  used  for  the  dance,  as  many  relatives  can 
be  interposed  before  the  lover-climax  as  the  players  please.  It  is  really 
a  game,  with  two  parties:  the  girl  and  her  friends,  and  the  pirates.  The 
dance  ends  when,  after  the  refusal  of  all  the  friends  and  relatives  to 
intervene,  —  that  is,  to  dance  with  her,  —  the  girl  is  "rescued"  by  her 
betrothed,  and  the  two  dance  together  a  final  figure.  —  See  the  ballad  in 
Hammershaimb,  Farufsk  Anthologi,  i,  268  f . 

^  The  Robin  Hood  plays  "  are  subsequent  to  the  development  of 
religious  drama,"  and  "are  of  the  nature  of  interludes,  and  were  doubt- 


106  THE    BALLAD 

Robin  Hood  plays  were  presented  in  London  and  other 
cities,  and  even  before  the  court  of  Henry  VHI;  and  it  is 
probable,  as  Chambers  points  out,  that  this  Robin  was 
at  first  only  the  Robin  of  French  pastourelles,  and  later 
identified  with  the  popular  ballad  hero.  The  primitive 
play,  festival,  rite,  are  never  derived  from  any  stage  of 
the  ballad,  legend,  myth;  these,  it  is  generally  conceded, 
spring  in  the  first  instance  from  the  dramatic  and  com- 
munal presentation.  Apart  from  possible  liturgical 
sources  for  certain  phases  of  the  ballad,  we  may  be  con- 
tent with  its  manifest  origins  in  the  dance.  Dances,  as 
overwhelming  evidence,  ethnological  and  sociological,  can 
prove,  were  the  original  stuff  upon  which  dramatic,  lyric, 
and  epic  impulses  wove  a  pattern  that  is  traced  in  later 
narrative  ballads  mainly  as  incremental  repetition.  Sepa- 
ration of  its  elements,  and  evolution  to  higher  forms, 
made  the  dance  an  independent  art,  with  song,  and  then 
music,  ancillary  to  the  figures  and  the  steps;  song  itself 
passed  to  lyric  triumphs  quite  apart  from  choral  voice 
and  choral  act;  epic  went  its  artistic  way  with  nothing 
but  rhythm  as  memorial  of  the  dance,  and  the  story 
instead  of  dramatic  situation;  drama  retained  the  situa- 
tion, the  action,  even  the  chorus  and  the  dance,  but  sub- 
mitted them  to  the  shaping  and  informing  power  of 
individual  genius.  Only  in  these  earliest  and  rudest 
ballads  of  the  actual  choral  dance,  and  in  tl\eir  late  sur- 

less  written,  like  the  plays  of  Adan  de  la  Hale,  by  some  clerk  or  minstrel. 
.  .  .  They  are,  therefore,  in  a  less  degree  folk-drama  than  sword-dances 
and  the  like."  —  E.  K.  Chambers,  The  Medimval  Stage,  i,  178. 


THE  PARENT  DANCE  107 

vival  as  children's  games,  are  the  original  elements  visible  . 
in  what  is  approximately  the  original  combination.  ] 
European  ballads  of  the  dance,  in  their  dramatic  form, 
lingered  with  remote  homogeneous  communities  like  that 
of  the  Faroes,  or  among  the  happy  folk  of  Holstein  be- 
fore the  innovations  came  which  Neocorus  so  feelingly 
deplores;  even  in  the  record  these  ballads  have  been  sub- 
mitted to  the  merest  touch  of  epic  explanation.  The 
Faroe  ballad  of  relatives,  for  example,  took  its  situation 
directly  from  life;  rovers  who  carried  off  girls  are  still 
held  in  vivid  remembrance  on  the  islands;  and  it  is  with 
a  shudder  as  of  real  peril  that  the  piece  is  still  enacted 
and  sung.  Visitors  of  long  ago,  and  visitors  of  yesterday, 
tell  of  the  force  with  which  the  Faroe  folk  realize  this 
simple  situation,  their  dramatic  fervor  and  their  intense 
interest  in  their  parts.  To  feel  the  ballad  as  one  dances  it 
is  the  primary  stage  in  its  development,^  not  the  final  lapse 
into  decay;  such  customs  bring  one  close  to  the  real  situa- 
tion, the  real  event.  If  Chambers  is  right,  the  homely  but 
affecting  ballad  of  "Andrew  Lammie"^  "used  in  former 
times  to  be  presented  in  a  dramatic  shape  at  rustic  meet- 

'  That  the  cante-fable,  a  late  and  artistic,  if  often  successful  affair 
(such  as  Aucassin  and  Nicolette),  cannot  be  the  protoplasm  common  to 
folk  tale  and  ballad,  as  Mr.  Joseph  Jacobs  suggested,  is  evident.  The 
ballad  in  its  beginnings  is  contemporary,  choral,  rhythmic;  the  tale  is 
reminiscent  prose.  Combination  of  verse  and  prose  is  always  late, 
always  artificial  or  artistic,  and  is  impossible  for  choral  conditions.  See 
Beginnings  of  Poetry,  pp.  71  f.,  and  such  hints  as  Child  gives,  i,  46, 
and  elsewhere. 

^  Child,  no.  233.  Compare,  too,  the  dramatic  singing  of  the, Twa 
Brothers  at  the  St.  George  play:  see  below,  p.  123. 


108  THE   BALLAD 

ings  in  Aberdeenshire; "  and  it  is  probable  that  a  hke  tale 
could  be  told  of  many  another  ballad  now  known  in  none 
but  its  reminiscent  and  traditional  versions. 

Similar  considerations  must  prevail  in  view  of  the  sur- 
vival of  a  primitive  stage  of  ballads  in  the  games  of  chil- 
dren. Survivals  of  this  sort  are  really  a  rescue  and  not  a 
funeral  rite.  They  revive  the  past  of  communal  festivity 
as  in  other  forms  they  revive  the  past  of  a  ritual,  an  old 
ceremonial  dance.  For  whatever  reason,  too,  these  very 
games  are  now  passing  away  in  their  turn;  but  such  as 
they  are,  these  diversions  of  boys  and  girls  were  once  the 
aesthetic  expression  of  a  whole  adult  community  quite  as 
homogeneous  in  its  unlettered  life  as  the  crowd  of  chil- 
dren at  play  is  homogeneous  in  terms  of  inexperience 
and  youth.  In  a  survival  we  are  always  looking  at  things 
through  a  reversed  spy-glass;  the  primitive  folk  looked 
through  the  right  end,  and  what  this  mere  game  repre- 
sents was  once  poetry,  music,  drama,  bringing  the  fate 
and  mystery  of  life  into  larger  outline  and  more  majestic 
groupings.  It  is  not  romantic  nonsense  to  say  that  the 
choral  effect,  even  now,  of  a  few  simple  words  sung  many 
times  over  by  many  voices,  has  an  aesthetic  appeal  quite 
independent  of  verbal  associations.  In  poetry  we  mod- 
erns —  modern  in  the  sense  that  an  Athenian  at  his 
Euripidean  tragedy  was  modern  —  demand  the  "lyric 
cry;"  under  the  conditions  which  ruled  when  earliest 
ballads  were  made,  men  needed  the  choral  cry.  Distinct 
from  both  is  the  reminiscent,  less  exciting  and  more  satis- 
fying,  quite  objective  story  of  the  epic,  —  the  middle  way, 


THE   EPIC   PROCESS  109 

neither ' '  cathartic  "  Hke  the  drama  nor  a  relief  of  personal 
emotion  like  the  lyric.  Ballads  tended  from  dramatic 
beginnings  into  this  middle  way.^  The  ballads  that  we 
have  are  not,  in  bulk,  of  the  primitive  dramatic  type, 
where  all  that  directly  interested  the  community  fell  into 
mimetic  action  with  song.  Tradition  had  doubtless 
selected  and  preserved  some  of  the  best  ballads  of  situa- 1 
tion;  a  few,  purely  dramatic,  had  survived  with  the 
dance;  but  an  impulse  not  purely  dramatic  and  choral 
had  come  into  play.  Set  in  words  and  song,  the  situation 
could  shift  for  itself;  and  it  was  easy  to  improvise  a  few 
verses  which  developed  the  situation  by  description 
instead  of  by  action,  and  thus  to  answer  demands  of  an 
epic  interest. 

It  is  not  hard  to  imagine  this  epic  interest  in  a  very 
humble  and  initial  phase.  The  too  familiar  sight  of  a 
Faroe  girl  carried  off  by  those  "Frisian  pirates,"  and 
appealing  in  turn  to  her  relatives,  passed  directly  into 
choral  expression  bounded  by  the  situation  itself.  Strik- 
ing, full  of  poignant  interest,  the  simple  iterated  verses 
were  soon  sung  for  their  own  sake,  and  at  once  responded 
to  an  external  demand  for  more  facts. ^  A  mother,  we 
will  say,  sings  them  to  her  children,  in  reminiscent  mood; 

^  Popular  tales  had  taken  this  route  from  the  start;  and  it  may  be 
presumed  that,  different  from  ballads,  they  had  always  been  concerned 
with  things  remote  in  time  or  in  space.    The  ballad  was  immediate. 

^  "The  Frisians  bent  to  their  oars,"  so  a  slight  narrative  puts  it;  the 
girl  wept,  and  cried  in  the  refrain,  "Let  me  not  pine  in  Frisia."  Then 
the  dramatic  situation  begins,  with  wonderfully  uniform"  incremental 
repetition  throughout,  as  detailed  above. 


110  THE   BALLAD 

the  situation  is  no  longer  present,  the  persons  no  longer 
in  evidence;  and  the  children  wish  to  know  who  the  girl 
was  and  how  she  came  to  her  plight.  Or  the  story  is  still 
sung  in  a  group,  but  as  reminiscence;  meeting  the  external 
desire  for  more  details,  improvisation  of  new  stanzas,  still 
holding  fast  to  the  old  formula,  develops,  as  poetic  "  iuA^en- 
tion,"  a  higher  type  of  verse.  So  the  ballad,  if  noteworthy, 
might  go  its  way  from  year  to  year.  It  is  clear  that  no- 
thing in  this  ballad  of  the  Frisian  pirates  needed  to  be 
borrowed  or  imported;  as  we  learned,  the  case  was  too 
familiar,  and  is  said  still  to  cause  a  traditional  shiver  of 
fear  among  the  Faroe  folk.  "To  be  take  in  Fryse,"  or  to 
Frisia,was  no  word  of  jest,  as  with  Chaucer.  Here,  in  any 
case,  was  material  enough  to  fill  and  form  the  original 
ballad  mould,  to  create  the  poetic  species.  That  all  man- 
ner of  interesting  stories,  found,  imported,  and  perhaps 
even  invented,  could  subsequently  be  run  into  this  mould 
is  natural  as  a  process  and  plain  enough  as  a  fact.  But 
the  species  itself,  the  ballad  as  a  poetic  form,  was  subject 
to  the  usual  laws  of  growth  and  change.  Sung  as  a  choral 
favorite,  such  a  piece  as  the  "  Frisian  Pirates  "  would  not 
only  improve  in  its  traditional  course,  but,  according  to 
the  conditions  of  its  vogue,  would  fall  into  one  of  two  great 
classes.  It  might  remain  as  a  ballad  of  situation,  short, 
dramatic,  choral.  It  might  also  go  the  epic  way,  find 
rather  an  audience  than  a  throng  of  active,  singing  folk, 
lose  its  refrain,  attract  other  details,  motives,  parts  of 
story,  grow  in  length  and  breadth,  vary  in  good  versions 
and  bad  versions,  and  come  finally  upon  the  record,  now 


THE  SITUATION  BALLAD  111 

as  a  sterling  traditional  narrative,  or  even  chronicle,  and 
again  as  popular  broadside  printed  by  the  cheap  press  and 
sold  in  the  stalls.  Let  us  look  for  a  while  at  the  first  class. 
Here  the  situation  retains  its  sovereignty,  and  keeps  the 
ballad  brief,  abrupt,  springing  and  pausing,  full  of  incre- 
mental repetition,  and  mainly  in  dialogue  form.  Pages  of 
description  and  comment  cannot  take  the  place  of  the 
ballad  itself;  and  there  is  no  better  example  of  this  old 
type  than  "Babylon,"  ^  recovered  from  Scottish  tradition. 
It  is  neither  so  near  its  choral  origins  as  to  lose,  like ' '  The 
Maid  Freed  from  the  Gallows,"  all  epic  body  and  nearly 
all  aesthetic  appeal,  nor  so  far  from  those  origins  as  to 
have  become  a  mere  recitation  of  events.  The  refrain 
should  be  read  aloud  through  the  entire  piece;  singing 
would  be  better;  and  the  incremjental  repetitions,  mark- 
ing out  the  vital  and  specific  ballad  from  its  epic,  jutrQ- 
duction^.and  end,  should  be  felt,  as  far  as  possible,  to 
be  mainspring,  and  not  dead  weight,  in  the  poetic 
mechanism. 

"  There  were  three  ladies  lived  in  a  bower. 
Eh  vow  bonnie. 
And  they  went  out  to  pull  a  flower 
On  the  bonnie  banks  o'  Fordie. 

"  They  hadna  pu'ed  a  flower  but  ane, 
When  up  started  to  them  a  banisht  man. 

"He's  ta'en  the  first  sister  by  the  hand, 
And  he's  turned  her  round  and  made  her  stand. 

1  Child,  no.  14. 


112  THE    BALLAD 

"  'It's  whether  will  ye  be  a  rank  robber's  wife, 
Or  will  ye  die  by  my  wee  pen-knife  ?  ' 

"  'It's  I'll  not  be  a  rank  robber's  wife, 
But  I  '11  rather  die  by  your  wee  pen-knife.' 

"  He 's  killed  this  may,  and  he 's  laid  her  by, 
For  to  bear  the  red  rose  company. 

"  He 's  taken  the  second  ane  by  the  hand, 
And  he's  turned  her  round,  and  made  her  stand. 

"'It's  whether  will  ye  be  a  rank  robber's  wife, 
Or  will  ye  die  by  my  wee  pen-knife  ? ' 

'* '  I  '11  not  be  a  rank  robber's  wife, 

But  I  '11  rather  die  by  your  wee  pen-knife.' 

"  He 's  killed  this  may,  and  he 's  laid  her  by, 
For  to  bear  the  red  rose  company. 

"  He 's  taken  the  youngest  ane  by  the  hand. 
And  he's  turned  her  round,  and  made  her  stand. 

"  Says,  '  Will  ye  be  a  rank  robber's  wife. 
Or  will  ye  die  by  my  wee  pen-knife  ? ' 

"  '  I  '11  not  be  a  rank  robber's  wife. 
Nor  will  I  die  by  your  wee  pen-knife. 

"  '  For  I  hae  a  brother  in  this  wood. 
And  gin  ye  kill  me,  it 's  he  '11  kill  thee.' 

'"What's  thy  brother's  name?    Come  tell  to  me.' 
'My  brother's  name  is  Baby  Lon.' 

"  '  O  sister,  sister,  what  have  I  done  ! 
O  have  I  done  this  ill  to  thee ! 


BABYLON  113 

"'O  since  I've  done  this  evil  deed. 
Good  sail  never  be  seen  o'  '  me.' 

"  He 's  taken  out  his  wee  pen-knife. 
And  he 's  twyned  ^  himsel  o'  his  ain  sweet  life." 

With  the  parallels  and  the  relations  of  "  Babylon  "  we  are 
not  now  concerned.^  It  may  belong  to  a  group  of  ballads 
which  all  derive  from  the  narrative  of  an  obvious  compli- 
cation; it  might  spring,  like  the  "Frisian  Pirates,"  from 
fact.  The  motive  of  it  has  been  used  powerfully  but  repul- 
sively by  Maupassant  in  one  of  the  stories  of  his  "Main 
Gauche."  We  deal  now  with  the  specific  ballad  form. 
That  the  situation  is  fairly  explosive  in  its  tragic  out- 
come must  not  blind  us  to  the  fact  that  it  is  a  situation. 
Who  the  three  ladies  were,  why  the  brother  was  banished,! 
all  the  essentials  of  a  narrative,  in  short,  are  wanting./ 
Maupassant  in  his  kind  of  art,  the  Icelandic  saga  in  its 
kind  of  art,  would  have  worked  all  this  out.  The  longer, 
romantic  ballad  itself  would  have  come  to  terms,  however 
briefly  and  awkwardly,  with  persons,  place,  time.    Here 

'  "  By."  —  The  rimes,  and  perhaps  the  verses  themselves,  are  quite 
disordered  here. 

2  "Deprived,"  "sundered." 

•''  Besides  the  Scandinavian  versions  named  by  Child,  i,  170  ff.,  see 
Axel  Olrik,  Danske  Ridderviser,  i,  115  f.,  and  "Torkels  D0tur"  in  Ham- 
mershaimb,  i,  45  f .  The  incremental  repetition  in  the  latter  is  constant 
and  typical;  for  example,  "they  sleep  till  the  sun  shines  on  their  bed: 
they  sleep  till  the  sun  shines  on  their  bedstead,"  —  a  stanza  for  each 
statement.    In  the  stable,  again,  — 

"  Slie  looses  one  steed,  she  looses  two. 
The  best  she  places  the  saddle  on." 

The  refrain,  too,  belongs  to  the  actual  dance. 


114  THE    BALLAD 

no  persons  are  described;  as  merely  "a  banished  man," 
the  hero's  name  is  indifferent;  the  place  is  a  fortuitous 
and  meaningless  part  of  the  refrain;  the  time  is  vague. 
The  simple  force  of  this  "Babylon,"  the  effective  char- 
acter of  its  lingering  repetition  followed  by  the  crash  of 
revelation,  must  not  make  us  forget  that  here  is  not  even 
the  art  of  narrative.  Here  Lessing's  famous  distinction 
breaks  down.  Poetic  as  it  is,  this  ballad  presents  no  story, 
no  epic  nucleus;  but  its  art,  like  the  art  of  painting,  of 
sculpture,  lies  in  the  moment  and  in  the  moment's  scope. 
The  figures  must  all  be  before  us  at  once,  a  situation 
inevitable  under  conditions  of  the  dance;  and  they  must 
all  tell  their  tale  in  a  single  action.  Indeed,  with  the  dance 
quite  ignored,  forgotten,  the  ballad  and  its  staying,  hem- 
ming refrain  still  give  the  effect  of  collocation  in  space 
rather  than  of  succession  in  time.  If  normal  dramatic 
time  be  put  by  the  old  rule  at  four  and  twenty  hours,  the 
normal  time  of  the  situation  ballad  ought  not  to  exceed 
twenty-four  minutes.  To  accent  this  impression  one  has 
only  to  contrast  with"  Babylon  "  a  purely  narrative  ballad 
of  the  best  type,  say  "Robin  Hood  and  the  Monk,"  or 
"Robin  Hood  and  Guy  of  Gisborne."  Here  are  long 
stories.  Personality  and  character  are  described.  Robin 
is  handsome,  blond,  has  a  "milk-white  side;"  he  is  a 
muscular  Christian,  indeed,  for  while  an  inch  of  his  body, 
so  the  Gest  assures  us,  is  worth  an  ordinary  whole  man, 
he  is  gentle,  pious,  will  harm  no  woman,  worships  the 
Virgin  Mary  with  a  kind  of  passion,  risks  his  life  to  hear 
Mass.  He  is  the  poor  man's  friend.  Even  particular  habits 


SITUATION  AND   NARRATIVE  115 

of  his  are  described.  Yet,  just  as  "Babylon"  is  at  some 
remove  from  actual  choral  condition.^,  —  for  one  must 
not  stretch  the  hint  of  a  dance  in  that  taking  of  the  sisters' 
hands  and  turning  them  round,  —  so  the  Robin  Hood 
ballads,  while  far  gone  in  epic,  still  keep  their  distance 
from  the  narrative  of  lettered  art.  What  they  have  accom- 
plished for  epic  purposes  by  changes  in  structure,  and 
that  is  the  point  now  in  view,  lies  mainly  in  the  reduction 
of  the  element  of  incremental  repetition,  that  is,  by  the 
removal  of  what  seemed  a  needless  obstruction,  as  well 
as  by  the  filling  of  those  gaps  and  omissions  which  critics 
persist  in  explaining  by  the  psychology  of  authorship  and 
which  are  so  clearly  due  to  oldest  dramatic  form.  The 
filling  up,  indeed,  is  more  easily  accomplished  than  the 
cutting  out;  you  turn  any  drama  into  a  novel  by  liberal 
supplies  of  "Hamlet  smiled  sadly,  and  remarked,"^ 
"  Sobbing  convulsively,  Ophelia  handed  him  the  letters; 
then,  with  supreme  effort  of  self-control,  .  .  ."  For  tran- 
sition from  situation  to  story,  the  rhapsode  had  his  own 
devices.  Medieval  reciters  used  a  change  of  voice,  or  other 
trick,  to  denote  the  various  persons  in  the  poem.^  So,  too, 
by  actual  word  and  phrase,  by  an  explanatory  stanza  or 
line,  the  shift  of  persons  and  scenes  can  be  indicated, 
as  in  one  of  the  homely  but  pathetic  English  ballads :  — 

"  Now  we  '11  leave  talking  of  Christy  Grahame 
And  talk  of  him  again  belive; 
But  we  will  talk  of  bonny  Bewick 
Where  he  was  teaching  his  scholars  five." 

^  So  with  Greek  rhapsodes.     See  Creizenach,  Geschichte  des  neueren 
Dramas,  i,  32,  with  references  to  Vinesauf's  Poetria. 


116  THE   BALLAD 

Other  devices  are  familiar  enough,  and  will  be  considered 
in  the  proper  place;  but  even  here,^  with  gaps  well  filled, 
the  excisions  are  not  so  noticeable,  and  the  tendency  is 
still  to  situation,  dialogue,  and  a  touch  of  incremental 
repetition  to  mark  the  important  moment.  Repetitions 
are  not  yet  felt,  in  Cowper's  phrase,  "to  make  attention 
lame."  In  point  of  fact,  even  the  epic  process  at  its 
farthest  point  in  ballads,  and  with  all  its  desire  to  push 
a  narrative  or  cover  a  gap,  is  less  potent  to  crowd  out 
choral  memories  than  the  lyric,  emotional  and  reflective 
impulse.  This  lyric  impulse  really  creates  a  third  class  of 
ballads,  just  halting  and  trembling  on  the  border  of  pure 
song.  Here  belong  "  Barbara  Allan  "  and  "Lady  Alice; "  ^ 
while  the  pretty  sentiment,  the  long-range  sympathy,  of 
"Bessy  Bell  and  Mary  Gray"  ^  have  converted  it  in 
England  "into  a  nursery  rhyme."  "Ballad  or  song"  is 
Professor  Child's  account  of  it.  These  ballads  of  lyric 
tendency  have  repetition,  but  not  of  the  incremental  and 
dramatic  kind.*  They  need  not  be  regarded  in  the  present 

^  Bewick  and  Grahame,  Child,  no.  211,  is  a  stall-copy,  a  corrupted 
but  not  utterly  spoiled  version  of  a  noble  old  ballad.  Long  as  it  is,  it 
is  really  a  ballad  of  two  situations,  and  in  the  first  of  these  the  incre- 
mental repetition  is  very  effective.  See  below,  p.  126. 

2  Child,  nos.  84,  85. 

3  Ibid.  no.  201. 

*  It  occurs,  however,  as  if  "dancing  for  joy,"  in  the  pretty  fifteenth- 
century  carol  of  Christ  and  his  Mother :  — 

"  He  came  al  so  still 

There  his  mother  was, 
As  dew  in  April 
That  falleth  on  the  grass. 

"  He  came  al  so  still 

To  his  mother's  bower, 


THE   VITAL    STRUCTURE  117 

case,  which  is  concerned  with  incremental  repetition  as  the 
touchstone  and  test  of  original  ballad  structure,  promi- 
nent in  the  ballads  of  situation,  and  dwindling  as  narrative 
gets  the  upper  hand. 

VII.    INCREMENTAL   REPETITION  AS   FINAL    PROOF   OF 
POPULAR    ORIGIN 

Incremental  repetition  made  up  the  whole  frame  of 
"  The  Maid  Freed  from  the  Gallows,"  simply  because  such 
ballads  were  still  part  and  parcel  of  the  dance. ^  Disen- 
gaged from  the  dance,  ballads  of  situation  like"  Babylon," 
"Lord  Randal,"  "The  Twa  Brothers,"  held  their  ground 
stoutly  and  kept  narrative  at  arm's  length.  This  leaping 
and  lingering,  with  the  group,  so  to.  speak,  fixed,  and  the 
parts  of  it  shifting  about,  created  its  own  aesthetic  appeal; 
and.  even  the  somewhat  mechanical  system  of  triads  came 
to  be  regarded  as  true  ballad  progress.  Except  in  the 
chronicle  ballad,  which  felt  that  grim  work  was  cut  out 
for  it,  and  therefore  took  the  nearest  way,  or  tried  to 
take  it,  the  structural  fashion  of  increments  held  firm. 

As  dew  in  April 
That  f  alleth  on  the  flower. 

"  He  came  al  so  still 
There  his  mother  lay, 
As  dew  in  April 
That  f alleth  on  the  spray." 

Incremental  repetition  of  the  refrain  (as  in  the  short  version  of  Lordp 
Randal)  is  common  in  all  lyric. 

'  Incremental  repetition  is  here  treated  as  characteristic  of  Germanic 
ballads.  It  occurs,  of  course,  elsewhere,  even  in  Armenian  popular  verse. 
French  ballads  have  it  in  plenty;  and  further  study  would  doubtless 
trace  it  through  all  the  Romance  tongues,  and  give  it  due  importance. 


118  THE   BALLAD 

Alien  material  had  to  fall  into  this  mould;  "Sir  Lionel," 
"  Hind  Horn,"  are  cases  in  point,  and  the  latter  ballad  is 
most  instructive  when  compared  with  the  related  "gest." 
So  vital  is  this  incremental  system  in  the  structure  of 
ballads,  that  it  not  only  dominates  the  main  progress  of  a 
borrowed  story,  but  even  treats  a  detail  of  this  story  so  as 
to  make  it  conform  in  pattern  with  the  rest.  In  "  Kemp 
Owyne,"  ^  which  nobody  would  claim  for  choral  origins, 
one  kiss  in  the  popular  tale  becomes  three  kisses  in  the 
ballad,  with  incremental  repetition  of  gifts,  —  belt,  ring, 
brand.  Parallel  cases  are  innumerable, —  for  example,  in 
a  Norw^egian  ballad,^  the  three  draughts  of  Lethean  effect 
which  make  Little  Kirstie,  now  the  hill-king's  queen,  forget 
her  former  home.  It  is  easy  to  see  how  this  structure 
would  be  almost  inevitable  for  the  ballad  of  situation,  pro- 
vided the  situation  still  tended  to  absorb  narrative  and 
block  an  epic  process  which  was  bound  to  conquer  in 
the  long  run.  This  epic  process  is  first  seen  at  the  begin- 
ning and  the  end  of  a  situation.  A  most  popular  ballad, 
spread,  as  Grundtvig  says,^  "over  the  whole  north,"  tells 
of  the  princess  who  plays  tables  or  dice  with  a  boy,  first 
her  necklace  against  his  old  hat,  where  she  wins,  then  her 
gold  crown  against  his  old  coat,  winning  again,  then  her- 
self against  his  hose  and  shoon,  —  where  she  loses.  The 
three  casts  have  each  three  stanzas  in  strictest  form  of 
incremental  repetition,  except  that  two  are  in  dialogue, 
and  the  third  in  narrative.    Next,  in  rapid  dialogue,  with 

'  Child,  no.  34.  ^  Landstad,  pp.  435  f.,  stanzas  16  ff. 

'  Danish  version,  Tcemingspillet,  iv,  402  fF. 


SITUATION   AND   REPETITION  119 

pairs  of  stanzas  and  no  narrative  at  all,  the  girl  offers 
silver-clasped  knife,  silken  sarks,  horse  and  saddle,  at 
last  the  castle  itself,  to  be  free,  but  in  vain.  Four  stanzas 
of  romantic  conclusion  then  reveal  "the  best  king's-son 
on  earth,"  and  turn  the  despair  of  the  princess  to  joy. 

We  see  the  set  of  the  tide.  Explanations  prefixed  to 
this  dramatic  nucleus  will  soon  give  the  desired  details; 
events  will  be  added,  connected;  and  narrative  will  soon 
absorb  the  situation.  Epic  interest,  here  gratified  only  by 
those  concluding  stanzas,  will  prove  stronger  than  dra- 
matic interest  in  the  lingering  game  and  in  the  climax 
of  bribes.^  Incremental  repetition,  ceasing  to  dominate 
thejvhole  ballad,  now  passes  from  general  structural  form 
into  a  sort  of  formula  of  situations  or  topics  which  have 
become  traditional  and  recur  as  old  favorites  in  the  new 
narrative  ballads.  Like  the  refrain,  it  will  linger  best  in 
those  ballads  that  belong  to  genuine  popular  tradition,  and 
it  will  disappear  utterly  from  such  a  ballad  as  "Lord 
Delamere,"  ^  where  tradition  is  at  a  last  stand,  and  the 
popular  maker,  with  his  drawling,  perfunctory  "Ri- 
toora-loora-la,"  is  disgustingly  evident.^  In  genuine  bal- 
lads rLsurvives  almost  constantly  in  one  of  three  forms: 

'  For  brevity  of  narrative,  intense  and  effective,  yet  retaining  scraps 
of  dialogue,  see  Le  Pont  des  Morts,  Crane,  no.  xix. 

2  Child,  no.  207. 

^  Stall-copies,  of  course,  can  be  fatal  to  incremental  repetition,  while 
it  will  linger  in  popular  recitation  of  the  same  ballad.  Compare  versions 
A  and  D  of  James  Harris,  the  Dasmon  Lover,  no.  243.  See  also  Pro- 
fessor Child's  remark  (ii,  180)  on  "a  copy  of  Lord  Thomas  and  Fair 
Elliner  written  over  for  the  ballad-mongers,  and  of  course  much  less  in 
the  popular  style." 


120  THE    BALLAD 

it  appears  as  necessary,  effective  expression  of  the  situa- 
tion; as  perfunctory  mark  of  style,  a  mere  manner,  by 
no  means  inevitable;  and  as  the  ballad  commonplace.^ 
Setting  aside  the  small  group  of  which  "The  Maid  Freed 
from  the  Gallows  "  is  type,  we  have  a  large  and  important 
class  where  situation  is  still  dominant  in  one  of  its  char- 
acteristic features  and  incremental  repetition  is  a  matter 
of  course.  Besides  cases  like  "Babylon,"  there  is  the 
ballad  where  a  "relative-climax"  is  a  part  and  not  the 
whole  of  the  situation.  Thus  a  wounded  soldier  calls 
vainly  for  water  from  father,  mother,  brother,  sister,  get- 
ting it  at  last  from  his  sweetheart.  This,  of  course,  is 
developed  by  incremental  verses.  Precisely  the  opposite 
case  occurs  in  "Clerk  Saunders;"  ^  of  seven  brothers 
who  surprise  their  sister  with  her  lover,  six  will  spare  him 
for  this  reason  or  that,  but  the  seventh  does  what  he 

*  There  is  but  one  other  way  to  account  for  this  structural  peculiarity 
of  ballads  and  at  the  same  time  discard  popular  origins.  It  might  be 
urged  that  the  formula,  let  us  say,  of  the  relative-climax  was  brought, 
as  any  good  story  is  brought,  from  popular  tales  or  wherever  else,  and 
applied  in  ballad  verse.  The  result  would  be  incremental  repetition. 
Pleased  with  the  smoothness  and  easy  course  of  such  structure,  ballad- 
makers  would  use  it  on  other  occasions,  and  so  it  would  get  its  vogue. 
But  such  an  explanation  flies  in  the  face  of  all  the  evidence  that  we  have 
gathered.  It  leaves  unexplained  that  decrease  of  incremental  repetition 
with  the  increase  of  epic  elements.  It  ignores  the  obvious  connection  of 
ballad  and  dance.  And  it  jars  absolutely,  fatally,  with  the  facts  of  poetic 
evolution,  where  repetition,  the  common  and  original  choral  stuff,  taking 
different  lines  of  change,  rules  at  first  in  popular  verse,  yields  to  epic 
necessity,  and  finally  disappears  amid  the  triumphs  of  full  artistic 
control. 

2  No.  69. 


THE   RELATIVE-CLIMAX  121 

thinks  to  be  his  duty.  Another  case  combines  relatives 
with  a  scheme  of  colors :  a  woman's  father  dies,  —  she 
will  dress  all  in  red;  the  mother,  —  make  it  yellow;  the 
brother  indicates  green;  and  the  sister  white;  "but  if 
my  dear  husband  dies,  I  will  dress  in  black."  ^  As  might 
be  expected,  the  climax  is  multiform;  but  it  falls  most 
readily  into  the  system  of  triads,  like  those  three  cries  for 
help,  best  shown  in  the  German  Ulinger:'^  the  first  cry  is, 
Jesu,  Marie  Sone,  the  second  Maria,  du  reine  Maid,  vain 
both,  but  the  third  and  successful  cry  is  to  allerliebster 
Bruder  mein,  who  rescues  or  else  avenges  his  sister.  The 
nearest  and  dearest  may  even  be  one's  self.  In  the  critical 
part  of  "Sir  Andrew  Barton,"  where  the  mast  must  be 
climbed,  first  it  is  the  retainer,  then  the  sister's  son,  none 
dearer,  and  finally  Sir  Andrew  himself.  In  "The  Cruel 
Brother  "  ^  the  climax  is  an  omission, —  with  fatal  conse- 
quences. This  formula  is  combined  with  that  of  the 
"legacy,"  a  favorite  end  of  tragic  ballads;  in  "Edward  "  * 
effective  repetition  leads  from  "poor  wife"  through  "old 
son"  to  "mother  dear,"  — who  has  for  chmax  the  "fire 
o'  coals."  Interesting  by  way  of  contrast  to  the  old  dra- 
matic and  choral  group  is  the  incremental  repetition  in 
relative  climax  —  like  that  of  "  Edward  "  —  along  with 
a  quite  perfunctory  ballad  commonplace.    When  Hughie 

1  See  Child,  ii,  347. 

^  See  Child,  introduction  to  no.  4,  Lady  Isabel  and  the  Elf-Knight, 
for  variants  of  these  three  cries,  —  for  example,  in  the  Bohemian, 
i.41. 

3  No.  11. 

*  No.  13,  version  A. 


122  THE    BALLAD 

Grame  ^  is  awaiting  a  felon's  death,  he  looks  "over  his 
left  shoulder,"  and  spies  his  father  lamenting  sorely; 
"peace,  father;  they  can  take  life  but  not  my  hope  of 
heaven;"  then  "over  his  right  shoulder,"  and  sees  his 
mother  tearing  her  hair;  but  now,  for  the  third  increment, 
instead  of  a  minatory  message,  our  ballad  breaks  lamely 
into  anti-climax  and  makes  Hughie  wish  merely  to  be 
"  remembered  to  Peggy  my  wife,"  who  had  brought 
about  his  doom.  Usually,  however,  like  the  "legacy" 
conclusion,  the  "  climax  of  relatives"  is  effective  enough. 
Thus  when  Lady  Maisry's  lover  ^  arrives  too  late  to  save 
her  from  the  flames  lighted  by  her  next  of  kin,  he  cries,  — 

"  '  O  I  '11  gar  burn  for  you,  Maisry, 
Your  father  and  your  mother; 
An  I'll  gar  burn  for  you,  Maisry, 
Your  sister  an  your  brother. 

•"An  I'll  gar  burn  for  you,  Maisry, 
The  chief  of  a'  your  kin; 
And  the  last  bonfire  that  I  come  to, 
Mysel  I  will  cast  in.' " 

Best  of  all,  in  this  respect,  is  the  ballad  of  "The  Twa 
Brothers"  ^  with  its  wide  contrast  between  two  versions; 
one  of  them,  with  motive  and  conclusion  almost  wholly 
of  the  "Edward "  type,  goes  back  to  the  dramatic,  choral 
class,  has  no  narrative  whatever,  and  is  a  single  situation 
developed  in  the  well-known  way.    It  was  *  "  sung  after 

1  No.  191,  A,  stanzas  19-23. 

2  Child,  no.  65,  A. 

3  No.  49,  A  and  I. 

*  See  Child,  v,  291.    It  is  not  necessary  to  assume  direct  borrowing 
from  Edward. 


THE  RELATIVE-CLIMAX  123 

a  St.  George  play  regularly  acted  on  All  Souls'  Day  at  a 
village  a  few  miles  from  Chester.  .  .  .  The  play  was  ' 
introduced  by  a  song  .  .  .  and  followed  by  two  songs  of 
which  this  is  the  last,  the  whole  dramatic  company  singing." 
The  more  familiar  traditional  version  has  an  epic  opening 
which  tells  the  tragedy  in  a  couple  of  stanzas;  two  bro- 
thers wrestle,  presumably  quarrel,*  and  one  is  stabbed  by 
the  other.  As  in  the  typical  ballad  of  situation,  this  brief, 
straightforward  bit  of  narrative  is  followed  by  dialogue 
and  incremental  repetition  to  the  end.  After  vain  attempts 
to  stanch  the  flowing  blood,  Sir  Willie  carries  Sir  John 
to  kirkyard,  and  the  relative-climax  follows  in  a  most 
effective  form :  — 

" '  But  what  will  I  say  to  my  father  dear. 

Should  he  chance  to  say,  Willie,  whar  's  John?' 
'Oh  say  that  he  's  to  England  gone 
To  buy  him  a  cask  of  wine.' 

" '  And  what  shall  I  say  to  my  mother  dear. 

Should  she  chance  to  say,  Willie,  whar  's  John?' 
'  Oh  say  that  he  's  to  England  gone 
To  buy  her  a  new  silk  gown.' 

" '  And  what  will  I  say  to  my  sister  dear. 

Should  she  chance  to  say,  Willie,  whar 's  John?' 
'  Oh  say  that  he  's  to  England  gone 
To  buy  her  a  wedding  ring.' 

" '  But  what  will  I  say  to  her  you  loe  dear. 
Should  she  cry.  Why  tarries  my  John?' 

1  Professor  Child  prefers  this  assumption  as  accenting  the  generosity 
of  the  victim.  The  absurdity  of  the  brothers  attending  school,  pointed  out 
in  B  where  they  are  "little,"  really  applies  to  A;  the  corruption  is  in  this 
detachable  narrative  explanation.    See  above,  p.  92. 


124  THE  BALLAD 

'Oh  tell  her  I  lie  in  fair  Kirkland 
And  home  will  never  come.'  "  ^ 

This  is  art;  but  it  is  an  unconscious  art,  due  in  the  first 
instance  to  the  old  choral  conditions.  Indeed,  instead 
of  developing  under  epic  treatment,  this  incremental 
repetition  in  the  climax  of  relatives  tends,  like  other 
forms  and  formulas,  to  disappear;  in  "Bonny  Lizie 
Baillie"  and  "Glasgow  Peggie,"^  corrupted  and  dis- 
ordered ballads,  it  is  present  in  a  very  mangled  state. 
Still  more  significant  is  its  progress  into  the  mechanical 
and  the  unmeaning,  and  even  into  burlesque.  An  inferior 
but  lively  ballad,  "  Glenlogie,"  ^  makes  father  and  mother 
give  their  daughter  quite  profitless  counsel,  and  then  puts 
"her  father's  chaplain"  in  the  climax  of  consolation.*  In 
another  ballad,^  sister,  brother,  mother,  and  father  come 
successively  in  and  call  Janet  a  vile  name;  she  defends 
herself;    then  in  comes  her  old  nurse  weeping,  warning 

^  This  "very  pathetic  passage,"  as  Professor  Child  calls  it,  i,  436, 
ranging  it  with  a  few  similar  cases,  "  is  too  truly  a  touch  of  nature  to  be 
found  only  here."  We  are  therefore  relieved  for  once  of  the  painful 
necessity  of  deciding  whether  A  copied  B  or  B  copied  A.  But  on  other 
accounts  the  increments  in  this  stanza  are  noteworthy  throughout.  A 
somewhat  similar  Flemish  use  of  the  relative-climax  is  where  in  Hale- 
wijun  the  girl  says  to  father,  brother,  sister  of  the  dead  man  that  he  is 
dallying  somewhere,  but  to  the  mother  that  he  is  dead. 

2  Nos.  227,  228. 

3  No.  238,  A. 

*  He  is  like  the  Flemish  shrift-father  in  Roland,  who  gives  Louise 
the  permission  refused  by  father,  mother,  and  brother.  See  also  no.  73, 
I,  Child,  iv,  469. 

^  Lady  Maisry,  version  B;  compare  I.  The  incremental  repetition  is 
very  effective.  Artistic  poetry  has  another  way  of  managing  such  a 
climax:  compare  Tennyson's  Home  they  Brought  her  Warrior  Dead. 


BURLESQUE  125 

Janet  of  her  fate,  and  offering  a  messenger  to  run  with 
news  to  the  lover.  A  version  of  "  Lbrd  Thomas  and  Fair 
Annet,"  very  disordered,  it  is  true,  makes  the  hero  visit  his 
father  and  get  bad  advice,  while  a  sister's  son  ("  sat  on  the 
nurse's  knee")  gives  nobler  counsel,  which  is  communi- 
cated further  and  superfluously  to  mother,  brother,  and 
sister.  This  is  confusion.  Actual  burlesque,  always  a 
proof  of  antecedent  popularity,  reaches  this  climax  of 
relatives  in  a  version  of  the  "  Mermaid,"  ^  still  beloved  for 
its  swing  and  its  lively  chorus.  Captain,  mate,  and  boat- 
swain of  the  doomed  ship  cry  incrementally  that  their 
wives  will  soon  be  widows;    when 

"...  next  bespake  the  little  cabbin-boy. 

And  a  well  bespoke  boy  was  he*. 
'I  am  as  sorry  for  my  mother  dear 

As  you  are  for  your  wives  all  three,' "  — 

pathetic  enough;  but  in  the  burlesque  it  runs:  — 

"  Out  and  spoke  the  cook  of  our  ship. 
And  a  rusty  old  dog  was  he: 
Says,  'I  am  as  sorry  for  my  pots  and  pans 
As  you  are  for  your  wives  all  three.'  " 

So  much  for  the  use  of  incremental  repetition  in  a  com- 
manding motive  or  typical,  important  formula.^    Ballads 

*  No.  289.     A  is  serious;   E  is  the  burlesque. 

^  If  incremental  repetition  appeared  only  in  these  formnlas  of  relative- 
climax,  best  of  three,  legacy,  and  what  not,  which  themselves  occur  not 
only  in  ballads,  but  in  folk  tales  and  other  forms  of  literature,  then  one 
could  argue  that  borrowing  could  account  for  it  and  its  origin  need  not 
be  sought  in  choral  conditions  of  the  primitive  ballad.  The  point  is  that 
incremental  repetition  is  the  fundamental   fact  in   ballad  structure. 


126  THE  BALLAD 

clung  to  the  art  of  it,  and  often  the  narrative  halts  to 
admit  a  touch  of  the  old  device.  In  "Bewick  and 
Grahame,"  a  father  tells  his  son  to  choose:  "fight  your 
sworn-brother  or  fight  me."  —  "Fight  a  man  that's  faith 
and  troth  to  me.^  How  can  I  do  it?  "  — 

"  '  What 's  that  thou  sayst,  thou  limmer  loon  ? 
Or  how  dare  thou  stand  to  speak  to  me? 
If  thou  do  not  end  this  quarrel  soon, 
Here  is  my  glove.,  thou  shalt  fight  me.' 

"  Christy  stoop'd  low  unto  the  ground, 

Unto  the  ground,  as  you  '11  understand,* 
'O  father,  put  on  your  glove  again; 

The  wind  hath  blown  it  from  your  hand.' 

" '  What 's  that  thou  sayst,  thou  limmer  loon  ? 
Or  how  dare  thou  stand  to  speak  to  me? 
If  thou  do  not  end  this  quarrel  soon. 
Here  is  my  hand,  thou  shalt  fight  me.' " 

This  second  class  of  survivals  in  incremental  repetition 
now  nearly  touches,  as  here,  the  old  dramatic  and  domi- 
nant note,  and  now  falls  almost  to  commonplace;  in  these 
cases  it  is  permanence  of  structural  form,  and  so  far  vital, 
—  not  a  mere  unintelligent  habit.  "Lord  Ingram  and 
Chiel  Wyet,"  ^  a  traditional  ballad,  shows  this  structural 
permanence  in  its  five  opening  stanzas;  incremental 
repetition  leads  up  to  the  cause  of  tragedy,  but  in  no 

belongs  not  to  ballads,  but  to  the  ballad,  and  occurs  under  all  circum- 
stances, great  or  trivial.  Borrowing  is  an  impossible  theory  in  this  case. 

*  Note  the  mixture  of  traditional  and  hallad-mongering  styles;  the 
matter  is  distinctly  good,  with  this  pathetically  urged  excuse  for  the 
father's  brutality. 

^  No.  66,  A. 


INCREMENTAL  REPETITION  127 

dramatic  situation,  and  with  the  relative-climax  *  sub- 
ordinate. In  other  words,  the  ballad,  bound  to  set  forth 
certain  facts,  chooses  the  old  structural  method  and  holds 
it  to  the  end.  In  shorter  compass,  incremental  repeti- 
tion gives  an  emphatic  effect:  ^  — 

"  They  had  na  been  a  week  from  her, 
A  week  but  barely  ane. 
When  word  came  to  the  carline  wife 
That  her  three  sons  were  gane. 

"  They  had  na  been  a  week  from  her, 
A  week  but  barely  three. 
When  word  came  to  the  carline  wife 
That  her  sons  she'd  never  see."  ^ 

Frequently  such  a  formula  is  reduced  from  stanzas  to 
lines,  but  keeps  the  proportion :  — 

'She's  led  him  in  thro  ae  dark  door, 

And  sae  has  she  thro  nine; 
She's  laid  him  on  a  dressing-table 
And  stickit  him  like  a  swine. 

"  And  first  came  out  the  thick,  thick  blood. 
And  syne  came  out  the  thin, 
And  syne  came  out  the  bonny  heart's  blood; 
There  was  nae  mair  within."  * 

Here  one  approaches  the  third  class,  the  commonplace,^ 
the  repetition  without  any  reason  save  that  it  is  remem- 

*  Here  the  "asking  permission"  with  climax  of  the  lady  herself,  as  in 
Katharine  J  affray. 

2  The  Wife  of  Usher's  Well,  no.  79. 

'  Compare  the  similar  structure,  pretty  enough  in  its  place,  quoted 
above  on  p.  116,  note  4. 

■♦  Sir  Hugh,  no.  155,  A. 

^  For  ballad  commonplaces  in  general,  see  below.  Chap.  IV. 


128  THE    BALLAD 

bered  and  applied  appositely  or  grotesquely  as  thejcase 
may  be.  It  is  hard  to  draw  the  line  of  division.  Exi- 
gencies of  the  stanza,  not  mere  remembrance,  force  an  old 
proverb  into  this  form :  — 

"  And  mony  ane  sings  o'  grass,  o'  grass. 
And  mony  ane  sings  o'  corn. 
And  mony  ane  sings  o'  Robin  Hood 
Kens  little  wliaie  he  was  born,"  '  — 

which  may  be  contrasted,  for  its  nugatory  pair  of  ante- 
cedent repetitions,  with  the  famous  stanza:  — 

"  Methinks  I  hear  the  thresel-cock, 
Methinks  I  hear  the  jaye; 
Methinks  I  hear  my  Lord  Barnard, 
And  I  would  I  were  away."  ^ 

Repetition  is  so  pervasive  as  to  become  inconsistent,  but 
not  quite  commonplace,  in  a  traditional  version  of  "Sir 
Patrick  Spens:  "  ^  — 

"Laith,  laith  were  our  Scottish  lords 
To  weit  their  coal-black  shoon; 
But  yet  ere  a'  the  play  was  play'd, 
They  wat  their  hats  aboon. 

"  Laith,  laith  were  our  Scottish  lords 
To  weit  their  coal-black  hair; 
But  yet  ere  a'  the  play  was  play'd, 
They  wat  it  every  hairj "  — 

'  No.  102,  A,  17.    See  also  the  next  stanza. 
^  No.  81,  A;   better  perhaps  in  B:  — 

" '  Methinkes  I  heare  Lord  Barnett's  home  ; 
Away,  Musgreve,  away  ! '  " 

3  No.  58,  B,  12  f. 


INCREMENTAL  REPETITION  129 

while  in  another  version,^  one  stanza  puts  the  drowned 
Scots  lords  at  Sir  Patrick's  head,  and  the  corresponding 
stanza  neatly  groups  them  at  his  feet.  On  the  other  side 
of  the  account,  a  famous  pair  of  stanzas  from  this  ballad, 
with  the  same  relation,  are  rightly  praised  by  Professor 
Child:  2  — 

"  O  lang,  lang  may  their  ladies  sit 
Wi  their  fans  into  their  hand 
Or  eir  they  se  Sir  Patrick  Spence 
Cum  sailing  to  the  land. 

"  O  lang,  lang  may  the  ladies  stand 
Wi  thair  gold  kems  in  their  hair. 
Waiting  for  thair  ain  deir  lords. 
For  they  '11  see  thame  na  mair."  ' 

This  is  no  commonplace.  Commonplace  is  the  unneces- 
sarily repeated  choice  of  three,  —  as  with  horses  of  differ- 
ent colors,  inevitable  at  certain  stages  of  certain  ballads, 
and  wearisome  enough.  This  commonplace,  however, 
may  at  any  time  become  effective  through  the  situation; 
so  in  "  Mary  Hamilton"  the  heroine  is  told  to  put  on  her 
robes  *  of  black  or  else  her  robes  of  brown,  but  refuses, 
repeating  the  negative  for  each,  and  adds :  — 

>  No.  58,  F,  13  f. 

^  A,  9,  10.  "It  would  be  hard  to  point  out  in  ballad  poetry,  or 
other,  happier  and  more  refined  touches." — These  touches  are  due 
entirely  to  the  incremental  repetition  and  its  suggestion. 

^  This  is  completely  spoiled  in  J,  where  the  sequence  of  three  stanzas 
puts  the  fan  into  Lady  Spens's  hand,  the  tear  into  her  ee,  and  the  hlach 
shoon  on  her  feet,  —  probably  for  mourning  purposes. 

^  Color  repetition  often  becomes  inconsistent,  as  in  the  Swedish 
ballad,  above,  p.  89. 


130  THE    BALLAD 

"But  I'll  put  on  my  robes  of  white. 
To  shine  thro  Edinbro  town." 

So,  too,  in  the  French  "Renaud,"  companion  piece  to 
'Clerk  Colvill,"  where  the  widow  asks  what  robe  she 
shall  wear,  and  the  mother  replies :  — 

"  '  Mettez  le  blanc,  mettez  le  gris, 
Mettez  le  noir  pour  mieux  choisi'.' " 

But  these  happy  touches  lie  not  in  the  structural  plan; 
what  concerns  us  now  is  incremental  repetition  as  a 
formula  of  no  aesthetic  or  dramatic  value  in  its  particular 
application.  Such  a  formula  as  that  of  the  page  and 
the  "broken  briggs"  often  becomes  superfluous;  often, 
again,  the  singer  is  simply  using  traditional  phrases  for  a 
traditional  case.  A  list  of  "  commonplaces  "  in  both  kinds 
is  printed  under  that  name  in  the  last  volume  of  Professor 
Child's  collection;  *  it  includes  plenty  of  incremental 
repetition,  —  as  where  poison  is  put  to  cheek,  chin,  lips, 
or  when  one  steps  into  water,  once  to  knee,  then  to 
middle,  then  to  neck,^  or  where  bells  are  rung  at  the  first 
kirk  and  Mass  said  at  the  next.  But  such  commonplace, 
though  often  individually  identical,  must  not  be  con- 
fused in  kind  with  the  capital  tendency  of  ballad  struc- 
ture to  run  its  material,  whatever  the  origin,  into  this 
mould.  In  that  ancient  and  sterling  ballad  of  "Child 
Maurice,"  for  example:  — 

"  'And  heere  I  send  her  a  mantle  of  greene, 
As  greene  as  any  grasse, 

1  Vol.  V,  474  f. 

2  Lady  Isabel,  B,  4  fF.;  Child  Waters,  B,  7  ff. 


INCREMENTAL  REPETITION  131 

And  bidd  her  come  to  the  silver  wood 
To  hunt  with  Child  Maurice. 

"  'And  there  I  send  her  a  ring  of  gold, 
A  ring  of  precious  stone, 
And  bidd  her  come  to  the  silver  wood. 
Let  for  no  kind  of  man,' "  — 

one  has  the  ballad  structure  not  as  a  commonplace,  but 
as  a  law  of  literary  form,  independent,  sui  generis,  and 
found  nowhere  else.  It  is  not  a  commonplace  in  the 
literal  sense,  but  a  case  of  structural  law,  a  category, 
inflexible  in  its  form,  but  perfectly  amenable  to  change 
of  material  and  contents,  as  may  be  seen  by  comparing 
the  corresponding  passage  in  the  Scottish  traditional 
version :  — 

"'Here  is  a  glove,  a  glove,'  he  said, 
'Lined  with  the  silver  grey; 
You  may  tell  her  to  come  to  the  merry  greenwood, 
To  speak  to  Child  Nory. 

"'Here  is  a  ring,  a  ring,'  he  says, 
'It 's  all  gold  but  the  stane; 
You  may  tell  her  to  come  to  the  merry  greenwood. 
And  ask  the  leave  o'  nane.' " 

It  may  vex  the  hurrying  reader  now  and  then,  and  offend 
by  mere  silliness,  — 

"He  lean'd  him  twofold  o'er  a  staff. 
So  did  he  threefold  o'er  a  tree," '  — 

or  by  superfluity,  as  when  an  effective  single  stanza  in  the 
'  GWe  Wallace,  no.  157,  A,  9. 


132  THE    BALLAD 

song  of  "Waly,  Waly"  is  inefifectively  doubled  in  the 
later  ballad :  ^  — 

"  Whan  we  came  through  Glasgow  toun. 
We  was  a  comely  sight  to  see; 
My  gude  lord  in  velvet  green, 
And  I  mysel  in  cramasie. 

"Whan  we  cam  to  Douglas  toun, 
We  was  a  fine  sight  to  behold; 
My  gude  lord  in  cramasie. 

And  I  myself  in  shining  gold." 

Structure  and  situation  have  here  nothing  in  common; 
the  style  does  not  fit  the  facts.  On  the  other  hand,  a 
Kentish  version  of  "Lamkin,"  -  formed  in  this  way 
throughout,  although  it  has  no  literary  interest,  has  its 
strong  dramatic  traditional  interest,  and  justifies  even  the 
superfluity  of  daughters.  Lady  Betty,  Lady  Nelly,  Lady 
Jenny,  and  the  ominous  "etc."  which  surrenders  this 
ballad  at  discretion. 

It  is  the  fate  of  the  popular  muse  that  she  is  credited 
with  nothing  but  the  trivial,  the  commonplace,  the  harm- 
lessly absurd;  whatsoever  is  more  than  these,  critics  as- 
sign to  one  of  her  high-born  sisters.  But  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  in  the  long  reaches  of   tradition,  and  in  the 

*  Jamie  Douglas,  no.  204,  A,  Child,  iv,  9S.  This  is  from  the  recitation 
of  one  who  had  it  from  an  old  dairj'woman.  The  traditional  ballad 
turns  instinctively  to  this  repetition.  Some  of  Buchan's  copies  are  of 
this  structure  from  end  to  end;  noteworthy  is  The  Baron  6"  Leys, 
no.  241,  C.  Changing  dress  at  this,  that,  and  yonder  town  is  common: 
cf .  Le  Cajritaine  ei  la  Fille  Prisonniere,  Puymaigre,  no.  xii  (p.  44)  —  the 
first  town  blue  satin,  the  second  in  diamonds,  the  third  for  the  wedding. 

2  No.  93,  K,  Child,  ii,  233. 


POPULAR   ^ESTHETIC   ELEMENTS  133 

wide  sweep  of  choral  song,  aesthetic  elements  have  been 
produced  which  the  poet  has  only  copied  and  perfected, 
and  whicH^TlI  appeal  in  their  own  rude,  unconscious  art. 
One  has  but  to  think  of  the  high  poetic  uses  to  which 
genius  has  put  the  communal  refrain  in  a  hymeneal  of 
Catullus  or  Spenser,  and  of  the  refinement,  often  to  arti- 
fice, which  it  has  undergone  in  forms  like  the  roundel  and 
the  ballade.  These  are  rescues ;  despite  the  waning  vogue 
of  choral  poetry,  despite  the  epic  processes,  the  literary 
invasion,  repetition  as  the  main  mark  of  choral  structure 
in  verse  retained  some  of  its  old  power  amid  its  old 
haunts.  Unable  to  keep  its  larger  vitality,  incremental 
repetition  still  refused  to  disappear  from  the  ballad;  one 
may  think  of  that  pretty  myth  of  the  dew,  burned  away 
from  field  and  lawn,  but  still  glistening  in  the  copses. 
It  is  the  legacy  of  an  early  and  a  popular  art,  no  invention 
of  the  poet  in  a  library.  It  is  the  genius  of  the  ballad  itself, 
formally  expressed,  springing  from  quite  intelligible  con- 
ditions of  a  singing,  dancing,  dramatic  festal  throng; 
hence  the  unique  and  ancient  appeal  of  this  stretched 
metre  at  its  best. 

"  'If  the  child  be  mine,  Faire  Ellen,'  he  sayd, 
'Be  mine,  as  you  tell  me. 
Take  you  Cheshire  and  Lancashire  both, 
Take  them  your  own  to  be. 

"'If  the  child  be  mine,  Faire  Ellen,'  he  sayd, 
'Be  mine,  as  you  doe  svveare. 
Take  you  Cheshire  and  Lancashire  both 
And  make  that  child  your  heyre.' 


134  THE    BALLAD 

"  She  saies,  '  I  had  rather  have  one  kisse, 
Child  Waters,  of  thy  mouth, 
Than  I  would  have  Cheshire  and  Lancashire  both, 
That  lyes  by  north  and  south. 

'"And  I  had  rather  have  a  twinkling, 
Child  Waters,  of  your  eye. 
Than  I  would  have  Cheshire  and  Lancashire  both, 
To  take  them  mine  owne  to  bee.' "  ' 

•  As  a  matter  of  mere  statistics,  incremental  repetition  is  found  con- 
sistently, and  mostly  along  with  the  refrain,  in  all  the  ballads  which  are 
grouped  by  Professor  Child  as  oldest  and  nearest  the  primitive  type; 
when  exceptions  occur,  it  is  almost  certain  that  the  fault  is  with  the 
record,  —  an  impatient  editor  or  collector,  an  economic  publisher. 
Comparing  the  manuscript  collections  in  the  library  of  Harvard  Univer- 
sity with  editions  made  from  them,  one  notes  short  cuts  and  evasions 
of  this  kind,  now  trifling  and  now  grave.  For  the  rest  of  the  ballads,  a 
careful  examination  shows  that  more  than  one  half  of  these  retain  the 
structural  feature,  reverting  to  it  at  the  most  important  and  the  most 
unimportant  moments,  that  is  to  say,  for  accenting  a  motive,  a  deed,  a 
situation,  and  for  rendering  a  commonplace.  The  long  chronicle  bal- 
lads, and  the  lowest  types  of  the  broadsides,  ignore  it  altogether. 


CHAPTER   II 
THE  BALLADS 

I.    THE    OLDEST    GROUPS 


NGLISH  and  Scottish  ballads  may  be 
grouped  according  to  their  subject,  their 
form,  their  relative  age.  The  oldest  bal- 
lads, apart  from  any  question  about  the 
time  when  they  were  recorded  or  rescued  from  oral  tra- 
dition, have  mainly  a  stanza  of  two  verses,  a  constant 
refrain,  and  the  mark  of  verbal  repetition  in  its  most  dis- 
tinct shape;  they  are  placed  by  Professor  Child  in  the 
forefront  of  his  collection ;  and  first  of  all  stands  a  ballad 
of  riddles. 

Along  with  gnomic  poetry  of  varying  kinds,  the  riddle 
is  of  quite  immemorial  age.  Together  they  formed  a 
counterpart  to  those  great  chorals  of  primitive  verse 
which  dealt  with  deeds  and  things ;  and  this  intellectual 
invasion  of  poetry  can  still  be  traced  in  low  stages  of 
culture.  The  Botocudos  of  South  America  sang,  and 
are  probably  still  singing,  in  chorus  of  almost  endless 
repetition,  short  sentences  which  not  only  laid  down  the 
lines  of  epic,  as  "  Good  hunting  to-day,"  but  also  em- 
bodied the  result  of  scientific  observation  and  blazed  a 
path  for  later  wisdom-literature  and  didactic:  "Brandy 
is  good!"    This  little  gnomic  song  can  be  matched  by 


136        .  *        THE  BALLADS 

a  formal  collection,  a  didactic  poem,  in  Anglo-Saxon, 
where  there  are  long  sequences  of  statements  not  a  whit 
more  incisive  or  complicated  than  Botocudan  lore,  — 
"frost  will  freeze,  and  fire  will  burn,"  for  an  example. 
Between  epic  and  didactic  lie  the  versus  memoriales 
which  Anglo-Saxon  preserves  in  its  oldest  recorded  poem, 
the  "Layof  Widsith,"as  a  very  ancient  form  of  history: — 

"  Atla  ruled  Huns,  Eormanric  Goths; "  — 

but  it  is  clear  that  the  "  sentence,"  the  piece  of  pure 
wisdom,  was  an  early  favorite  in  choral  verse.  Lovers 
of  the  deep  things  in  poetry,  who  are  inclined  to  sneer 
at  such  commonplace,  should  analyze  the  wisdom  of 
the  moderns  and  reduce  a  metaphysical  poet,  old  or 
new,  to  intelligible  prose.  Primitive  verse  put  its  abstrac- 
tions simply;  or  else,  by  an  easy  change,  posed  a  frank 
little  problem  for  intellectual  effort.  Our  riddle  ballad 
is  still  a  plain  affair,  in  sharp  contrast  to  the  far  older, 
yet  far  more  intricate  riddles  of  Anglo-Saxon  record, 
which  were  translated  from  a  Latin  source,  as  well  as 
to  the  half-scientific  questions  and  answers  in  a  com- 
pilation like  "Solomon  and  Saturn."  Whether  or  not  all 
the  "  catechism "  literature  of  that  time,  mainly  about 
the  sky  and  the  seasons,  is  to  be  referred  to  Greek 
sources,  there  was  a  short,  simple  question,  now  in  verse 
and  now  in  prose,  which  the  people  always  loved,  and 
which  men  of  later  times,  like  Handle  Holmes,^  copied 

1  MS.  Harl.  1960.  See  Tupper,  Publications  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc,  1903, 
xviii,  211  ff.   On  the  riddle  chap-books  see  Petsch,  Palaestra,  iv,  6  if. 


RIDDLE    BALLADS  137 

into  a  commonplace  book,  precisely  as  they  copied  ballad 
and  song.  Even  now,  this  sort  of  question  has  its  vogue 
in  rural  districts  and  in  the  upper  classes  of  the  nursery; 
and  for  older  days  not  only  did  a  learned  riddle,  par- 
ticularly if  its  learning  were  biblical,  drift  among  the  peo- 
ple, but  literary  collections  were  often  recruited  from  the 
popular  supply.  In  the  "Demaundes  Joyous,"  printed 
after  the  French  in  1511,  "Which,"  it  is  asked,  "is  the 
moost  prof y table  beest  and  that  man  eteth  least  of  ?  — 
This  is  Bees." 

In  ballads,  one  has  to  distinguish  the  riddles  made 
or  produced  in^^the  throng  from  those  of  the  minstrel's 
stock  jn__trade.  Tragemund,  —  perhaps  "  interpreter," 
dragoman,  —  in  the  old  German  ballad,^  is  a  "travel- 
ling man,"  the  Widsith  of  riddles,  who  answers  long 
lists  of  questions  with  consummate  ease;  some  of  them 
have  found  their  way  into  English  ballads.  But  it  is 
a  fact  that  the  riddle  belonged  originally  with  the  popu- 
lar festal  dance.  To  this  day  a  riddle  is  put  by  prefer- 
ence in  rime;  in  older  days  it  was  sung,  and  was  an- 
swered by  song;  and  there  is  plenty  of  evidence  that 
all  went  once  to  choral  measure.  Radloff  gives  us  a 
glimpse  of  primitive  conditions  among  the  Tartar  tribes 
of  Siberia,  where  a  public  assembly  is  amused  by  the 
improvised  flyting  of  sundry  singers  or  by  a  riddle-contest 
in  song.     A  girl  who  takes  part  in  such  a  contest  first 

1  "Wager  and  Wish-Songs"  is  Uhland's  division;  and  he  says  they 
are  "sprung  from  social  intercourse,"  —  probably  true  for  ultimate  ori- 
gins.   See  his  Abhandlungen  iJber  die  deutschen  Volkslieder,  pp.  181  S. 


138  THE   BALLADS 

flouts  her  opponent,  then  flatters,  and  finally  falls  into 
a  series  of  riddles  or  questions :  what  was  first  created  ? 
who  was  so-and-so's  father  ?  why  do  the  w^aters  freeze  ? 
The  other  singer  answers  every  riddle,  so  that  the  girl 
fairly  resigns  the  game  and  presents  him  with  a  coat  as 
prize  of  victory.  In  repetition,  variation,  interlaced 
stanza,  these  riddle  and  flyting  verses  from  Siberia  are 
amazingly  like  the  Scottish  and  German  ballads,  al- 
though there  is  no  possible  link  between  them.  Instead 
of  rivalry  at  the  dance,  a  little  story  frames  the  Scottish 
ballad  contest:^  — 

"  There  was  a  knicht  riding  from  the  east, 
{Sing  the  Gather  banks,  the  honnie  brume) 
Wha  had  been  wooing  at  monie  a  place. 
{And  ye  may  beguile  a  young  thing  sune)." 

This  strange  knight  asks  a  widow  for  her  three  daughters; 

the  youngest,  who  is  of  course  brightest,  is  put  to  the 

test : — 

"  '  O  what  is  heigher  nor  the  tree  ? 
And  what  is  deeper  nor  the  sea  ? ' " 

he  asks  in  a  series  of  questions  which  end  with  a  chal- 
lenge to  name  something  "worse  than  a  woman;"  and 
she  answers  all,  affirming  that  "  Clootie,"  the  devil,  is 
worse  than  woman.  The  fiend,  named  and  revealed, 
goes  off  in  fire. 

One  must  sunder  the  good  riddle,  which  is  kept  for 
its  own  sake,  and  either  teaches  by  its  truth  or  pleases 

*  No.  1,  C,  from  recitation.  —  The  riddle  tales,  of  course,  run  on 
the  same  plan. 


RIDDLE   BALLADS  139 

by  its  ingenuity,  from  the  riddles  which  only  serve  to 
help  the  situation  and  fill  out  the  story.  A  variant  of  the  '~' 
riddle  flyting,  very  interesting  in  the  present  case,  matches 
one  question  or  demand  not  by  its  answer  but  by  an- 
other question  or  demand.  Usually  these  alternate;  but 
in  "The  Elfin  Knight"  ^  a  clever  maid  wins  her  victory, 
baflfling  the  elf,  by  a  torrent  and  cumulation  of  desire 
for  impossible  things  in  answer  to  his  request  for  a  sark 
without  any  cut  or  hem,  made  without  knife,  shears, 
needle  and  thread.  "Plow,"  she  says,  "plow  with  your 
horn  my  land  by  the  sea,  sow  it  with  your  corn,  build 
a  cart  of  stone  and  lime  and  let  Robin  Redbreast  draw 
it  home,  barn  it  in  a  mouse-hole,  thresh  it  in  the  sole 
of  your  shoe,  winnow  it  in  the  palm  of  your  hand,  and 
sack  it  in  your  glove!"  Baring-Gould  gives  a  version 
once  "  sung  as  a  sort  of  game  in  farm-houses  "  of  Corn- 
wall "between  a  young  man  who  went  outside  the  room, 
and  a  girl  who  sat  on  the  settle,  .  .  .  and  a  sort  of  chorus 
of  farm  lads  and  lasses,"  a  most  interesting  survival.^ 
Indeed,  the  earliest  form  of  this  type  of  ballad  was  made  i^ 
in  actual  dances;  the  strenuous  "long  dance"  of  Hol- 
stein  still  goes  to  such  a  song.  Like  the  ballad  of  the  sprin- 
geltanz,  and  like  the  cumulative  ballad  sung  at  the  dance 

1  No.  2.    See,  also,  Child,  iv,  439. 

^  The  present  writer  remembers  a  sort  of  yokel  flyting,  where  recip- 
rocal challenges  were  given  in  prose  to  perform  an  impossible  task. 
"Rub  the  sunshine  off  that  wall!"  —  "You  wheel  all  the  smoke  out 
of  the  smokehouse."  —  These  "demands  joyous"  soon  passed  the 
bourn  of  propriety;  but  the  "smoke  house"  request  was  evidently 
traditional. 


140  THE  BALLADS 

of  the  Frisians,  this  song  of  the  long  dance  is  an  affair 
of  choosing  partners,  perhaps  an  old  wedding  measure.* 

'"I  know  a  pretty  maiden, 

I  would  that  she  were  mine ; 
^^        I'll  marry  her,  if  from  oaten  straw 
She'll  spin  me  silk  so  fine.' 

"  •  And  must  I  out  of  oaten  straw 
Spin  thee  silk  so  fine, 

Then  make  thou  me  some  brave  new  clothes 

Out  of  the  leaves  o'  line.' 

" '  And  must  I  make  thee  brave  new  clothes 
Out  of  the  leaves  o'  line, 
Go  now  and  fetch  for  me  the  shears 
From  out  the  midst  of  Rhine.' " 

So  it  flies  back  and  forth,  with  interlaced  quatrains,  as 
in  the  Siberian  song ;  but  all  in  time  to  steps  and  move- 
ments of  the  dance,  and  in  that  form  of  incremental  re- 
petition which  the  situation  demands.^   There  can  be  no 

'  Riddles  are  asked  at  weddings  in  Russia.  —  Child,  i,  418. 

^  French  songs  of  the  dance  have  been  studied  in  Jeanroy's  admir- 
able Origines  de  la  Poesie  Lyrique  en  France.  There  one  sees  how  a 
dance,  with  its  song  of  the  leader  and  the  refrain  of  the  dancers,  could 
lapse  and  leave  the  song  itself  by  perfectly  plain  steps  to  proceed  through 
stage  after  stage  to  such  apparently  artificial  forms  as  the  rondeau  and 
its  complications.  The  name,  however,  like  "  ballad,"  betrays  its  origin 
in  a  popular  dance.  When  the  entire  throng  of  dancers  sang  and  acted, 
say,  a  song  of  bride-chasing,  then  a  ballad,  not  a  folk  song,  would  re- 
sult and  did  result.  J.  Bcdier,  "Les  plus  anciennes  danses  franca ises," 
in  Rei\  d.  d.  Mondes,  Jan.  15,  1906,  gives  some  interesting  evidence 
of  this  sort.  The  refrains  can  be  traced  back  into  the  thirteenth  century. 
For  German  dance-songs  combined  with  the  riddle,  see  Uhland  on  the 
Kranzlieder  in  his  Abhand.  z.  d.  VolksL,  p.  208.  For  repeated  and  inter- 
laced stanzas  in  old  Portuguese  lyric,  and  their  origin  in  the  chorus 


RIDDLE    BALLADS  141 

doubt  that  our  own  riddle  ballads  go  back  to  such  a 
dance,  but  they  were  too  popular  not  to  fall  into  the 
epic  procession.  The  mere  flash  of  riddle  and  answer, 
the  thrust  and  parry  of  alternate  demand  for  impossible 
things,  might  well  satisfy  a  festal  and  choral  throng; 
but  in  the  popular  tale  these  demands  were  converted 
into  the  story  of  an  actual  quest  with  triumphant  results, 
and  in  the  narrative  ballad  they  could  be  fused  with  a 
motive  of  courtship,  an  ordinary,  every-day  affair,  or  else 
blend  with  the  supernatural.  "Captain  Wedderburn's 
Courtship,"  ^  for  example,  reverses  the  Elfin  Knight's 
proceedings.  The  captain  carries  off  his  lass;  she  re- 
fuses to  marry  him  until  he  has  brought  her  sundry  im- 
possible things;  but  our  ingenious  officer  reduces  these 
to  wares  of  any  market.  "Get  me  a  chicken  without  a 
bone,"  she  says;  and  "here's  your  egg,"  counters  the 
captain.  So  it  goes  on  until  the  maid  resigns  her  game. 
"Now  she's  Mrs.  Wedderburn,"  concludes  the  ballad, 
with  a  final  change  rung  on  its  jingling  and  saucy  v^zj 
frain.  Here  is  broad  Scottish  daylight.  "King  John  and 
the  Bishop,"  however,  a  far-come  story,  has  its  roots  in 
oriental  folklore;  while  "Proud  Lady  Margaret"  is 
shadowed  by  unnatural  dark.  The  knight  who  seeks  this 
lady  in  her  bower,  and  is  told  to  guess  certain  riddles 
or  die,  turns  out  to  be  a  brother  come  back  from  the 
grave  "to  humble  her  haughty  heart."     Question  and 

of  a  communal  dance,  see  H.  R.  Lang,  Liederbuch  d.  konigs  Denis, 
pp.  xcv,  cxxxviii  ff. 

'  No.  46;   the  next  ballads  named  are  45  and  47. 


l^ 


i^ 


142  THE  BALLADS 

answer  are  no  longer  in  the  foreground,  and  romance 
is  dominant. 

As  with  form,  so  with  material.  Like  incremental  re- 
petition in  structure,  this  old  notion  of  impossible  things 
tX  becomes  a  ballad  commonplace,  an  equivalent  for  the 
Greek  kalends ;  not  till  crows  are  white,  swans  are  black, 
stones  float,  "when  cockle-shells  grow  siller  bells,"  or 
"till  salt  and  oatmeal  grow  both  of  a  tree,"  this  or  that 
will  be  done. 

"  *  Whan  will  ye  come  hame  again,  Willie  ? 
Now  Willie,  tell  to  me.' 
'  When  the  sun  and  moon  dances  on  the  green, 
And  that  will  never  be.' "  ^ 

More  romantic,  but  of  the  same  piece,  is  Scott's  pretty 
verse  about  the  rose  in  winter-snow.  "  Never,"  of  course, 
is  the  word  for  all  this;  now  and  then,  however,  the  im- 
--— possible  is  assumed  as  possible  through  magic,  and  we 
have  the  companion  piece  to  many  popular  tales.  What 
Professor  Child  calls  a  "base-born"  but  lively  little  bal- 
lad, "The  Twa  Magicians,"^  describes  the  pursuit  of 
a  lady  by  a  coal-black  smith. 

"O  bide,  lady,  bide. 

And  aye  he  bade  her  bide; 
The  rusty  smith  your  leman  shall  be 
For  a'  your  muckle  pride,"  — - 

runs  a  lively  chorus;   and  there  is  no  difficulty  in  think- 
ing of  this  ballad  as  an  actual  dance,  with  rapid  changes 

*  No  49,  D;   and  note  the  long  sequence  in  no.  299.    Child's  list,  i, 
437,  includes  foreign  sources. 

'  No.  44.    The  French  versions  are  more  delicate.  See  Crane,  no.  xxx. 


FLYTINGS  143 

of  figure  to  suit  transformations  of  the  lady  from  dove 

to  eel,  to  duck,  to  hare,  of  the  smith  from  "another  dove" 

to  trout,  to  drake,  to  greyhound,  and  so  to  less  romantic 

conclusions.     The  blacksmith  wins,  and  the  piece  has 

a  defiant,  half-scurrilous  tone;    it  has  strayed   into  evil  / 

courses,  although  it  confesses  a  nobler  origin.  (  Another 

ballad,  where  by  implication  the  maid  wins  her  flyting 

and  her  case,  has  wandered  very  far  from  the  old  ways, 

and  seems  quite  alien  to  popular  tradition.     Professor 

Child  was  right,  however,  in  making  room  for  "The 

Gardener."  ^     "  Can  you  fancy  me,"  says  a  gardener  to 

the  leal  maiden  who  goes  by,  "to  be  my  bride?    You'll 

get  all  my  flowers  for  clothing,  —  the  lily  for  smock, 

gillyflowers  on  your  head,  gown   of  the   sweet-william, 

coat  of  '  camovine,'  apron  of  salads,  stockings    of  the 

broad  kail-blade,  and  gloves  of  marygold."    She  answers 

with  a  farewell  and  a  return  offer  of  clothing  from  no 

summer  flowers :  — 

"  '  The  new-fallen  snow  to  be  your  smock. 
Becomes  your  body  neat; 
And  your  head  shall  be  deck'd  with  the  eastern  wind. 
And  the  cold  rain  on  your  breast.'  " 

Popular  fancy,  and  the  chances  of  tradition,  varied  this 

sort  of  thing  at  will.   Dr.  Thomas  Davidson  remembered 

a  fragment  of  the  Aberdeenshire  version :  — 

" '  The  steed  that  ye  sail  ride  upon 
Sail  be  o'  the  frost  sae  snell; 
And  I'll  saddle  him  wi'  the  norlan  winds. 
And  some  sharp  showers  o'  hail.'  " 

1  No.  219. 


144  THE   BALLADS 

From  these  flyting-verses  to  outright  imprecation  is  no 
long  journey.  The  evil  wish  ^  was  a  dread  weapon  for 
antiquity,  provided  one  knew  his  gramarye;  and  magic, 
with  werewolves  and  whatever  other  transformations, 
was  but  a  step  or  so  into  the  dark.  Elaborate  impre- 
cation, however,  apart  from  stock  phrases  like  "  an  ill 
death  may  you  die,"  makes  little  figure  in  the  ballads. 
We  find  the  regular  last  will  and  testament  of  curses 
at  the  end  of  "Edward,"  of  "Lord  Randal,"  and  of 
some  other  ballads;  ^  but  it  forms  no  part  of  the  story. 
Solemn,  and  to  some  extent  effective,  is  the  imprecation 
of  the  "Wife  of  Usher's  Well :"  — 

" '  I  wish  the  wind  may  never  cease. 
Nor  fashes  in  the  flood, 
Till  my  three  sons  come  hame  to  me 
In  earthly  flesh  and  blood.'  " 

That  old  woman,  again,  who  kneels  on  the  plank  over 
black  water,  and  bans  Robin  Hood,^  is  impressive  enough, 
and  one  laments  the  lost  stanzas  which  told  more  of 
her;  she  and  the  women  who  weep  for  the  outlaw's 
case  are  weird  sisters  indeed,  heightening  the  sense  of 
coming  doom  and  playing  almost  as  romantic  a  part 
as  the  old  nobleman  who  curses  Triboulet  in  "Le  Roi 
S'Amuse."     But  there   is  very  little  of  this  in  the  bal- 

^  The  late  classical  and  sophisticated  example,  of  course,  is  Ovid's 
Ibis.    In  Ireland  the  old  bards  were  particularly  dreaded. 

^  For  a  notable  series  of  such  wish-legacies  to  the  culpable  rela- 
tives, see  the  end  of  version  I  of  The  Maid  Freed  from  the  Gallows, 
no.  95. 

^  Robin  Hood's  Death,  st.  8. 


DOMESTIC    COMPLICATIONS  145 

lads.  The  mother's  mahson,  in  a  ballad  of  that  title,  is 
unnatural;  and  only  wildest  anguish  can  account  for 
Fair  Annie's  cry :  ^  — 

*' '  Gin  my  seven  sons  were  seven  young  rats, 
Running  on  the  castle  wa'. 
And  I  were  a  gray  cat  mysell, 
I  soon  would  worry  them  a'. 

'"Gin  my  seven  sons  were  seven  young  hares, 
Running  o'er  yon  lilly  lee, 
And  I  were  a  grew-hound  mysell. 
Soon  worried  they  a'  should  be  ! ' "  ^ 

"Fair  Annie"  with  her  wild  wish  has  brought  us  far 
from  the  riddles  and  the  flytings;  this  ballad  is  within 
measurable  distance  of  romance,  and  echoes  withal  the 
tragedy  of  domestic  complications.  Yet  we  have  made 
no  detour.  Domestic  complication,  in  the  widest  range  of 
the  term,  furnishes  a  theme  for  the  majority  of  English 
and  Scottish  ballads;  and  there  will  be  no  better  way  to 
approach  our  task  of  describing  them  in  their  narrative 
essence  than  by  this  well-trodden  path  of  the  stolen  sweet-' 
heart  or  bride.    Moreover,  one  begins  thus  with  a  general 

1  See  nos.  216  and  62. 

^  The  deserted  or  cruelly  treated  maid,  in  a  stanza  too  effective  to 
be  called  commonplace,  wishes  all  the  evil  for  herself,  and  all  the  good 
either  for  her  false  lover  or  for  her  unborn  child.  See  the  stanza  from 
Child  Waters  (no.  63),  quoted  below,  or  this  from  the  song  which 
goes  with  Jamie  Douglas  (no.  204) :  — 

"  '  Oh,  oh,  if  my  young  babe  were  born. 
And  set  upon  the  nurse's  knee, 
And  I  my  sell  were  dead  and  gane  ! 
For  a  maid  again  I  'II  never  be.'  " 


146  THE   BALLADS 

and  human  fact;  the  theme  of  family  woes,  in  its  main 
outlines,  needs  as  little  to  be  borrowed  from  some  other 
"source"  as  the  basal  idea  of  having  a  family  needs 
to  be  borrowed  from  race  to  race.  A  few  primary  in- 
stincts are  still  conceded  even  by  the  comparative  folk. 
"Fair  Annie,"  to  be  sure,  is  found  also  in  Danish  and 
Sw^edish  versions;  it  tells  a  story  which  Marie  de  France 
told  seven  centuries  ago,  from  an  old  Breton  tale,  in  her 
"Lai  del  Fresne;"  and  behind  both  ballad  and  tale  lies 
a  common  source  "too  far  back  for  us  to  find."  Yet  it 
must  be  said  that  the  material,  so  far  as  situation  and 
action  are  concerned,  lay  everywhere  at  hand  in  the 
life  out  of  which  tale  and  ballad  sprang.^  A  knight  from 
over  sea,  doing  the  grand  tour  of  those  days,  steals  Annie 
and  takes  her  home.  She  bears  him  seven  sons  and 
rules  his  house,  till  he  bethinks  him  to  get  a  lawful  wife 
with  shiploads  of  dower.  His  choice  falls  unwittingly 
on  Fair  Annie's  sister,  whom  he  brings  to  his  castle, 
and  who  hears  the  "imprecation,"  quoted  above,  just 
in  time  to  adjust  matters,  give  her  "tocher"  to  the  old 
love,  and  "gae  maiden  hame."  The  complication  and 
adjustment,  this  recognition  motive,  so  effective  at  a  crisis 
and  so  dear  to  Euripides,  is  found  in  a  few  other  ballads, 
in  "Babylon,"  "Child  Maurice,"  "Horn,"  and  belongs 

'  So  in  the  Scandinavian  ballads  :  "Perhaps  no  set  of  incidents  is 
repeated  so  often  in  northern  ballads  as  the  forcing  of  the  bower  on 
the  strand,  the  giving  of  keepsakes,"  and  so  on,  says  Mr.  Child  of  the 
Gil  Brenton  group.  In  the  Faroes  it  is  the  robbing  of  a  girl  by  Frisian 
pirates.  Quidquid  agunt  Jiomines  is  a  good  source,  and  borrowing  is 
not  necessary  for  original  motives. 


VARIANTS  OF  THE   STOLEN   BRIDE         147 

of  course  to  an  incipient  romance;  but  the  robbery  of  a 
bride  or  sweetheart  was  common  stuff  and  found  fre- 
quent dramatic,  choral  presentation  in  ballads  of  the 
primitive  type  like  that  Faroe  song  of  the  Frisian 
pirates  and  its  English  version  of  "The  Maid  Freed 
from  the  Gallows."  This  is  fundamental;  the  later  epic 
process  falls  into  two  general  classes.  Either  it  connects 
with  legend  of  the  countryside,  and  so  simply  echoes 
the  life  of  its  makers  and  transmitters,  or  else  it  attracts 
to  itself  a  motive  or  a  story  of  international  interest, 
a  touch  of  old  myth,  a  complex  of  partly  local  and 
partly  foreign  supernatural  lore.  Thus  we  have  a  short 
but  intense  "local"  ballad,  —  "Earl  Brand,"  let  us 
say, —  with  purely  human  interest;  or  else  a  "Lady 
Isabel  and  the  Elf  Knight,"  with  store  of  uncanny  asso- 
ciations. These  have  still  the  mark  of  choral  origins, 
in  their  incremental  structure,  their  brevity,  their  fond- 
ness for  the  dramatic  situation.  Farthest  from  choral 
origins,  an  affair  for  the  reciter  rather  than  the  singer, 
is  the  long,  leisurely,  "elegant"  ballad  of  the  type  of 
"King  Estmere."  It  will  be  well  to  look  more  care- 
fully at  these  three  types. 

For  the  choral  foundation,  much  has  been  said  already 
in  the  discussion  of  "The  Maid  Freed  from  the  Gallows;" 
but  that  is  not  a  ballad  of  bride-stealing,  however  the 
Faroe  version  seems  to  point  out  such  an  origin.  Luckily 
the  Ditmarsh  folk  in  Holstein  come  again  to  the  rescue 
with  a  genuine  ballad  which  they  used  for  their  tnjmme- 
ken  dance,  and  doubtless  once  made  in  the  dance  itself; 


148  THE  BALLADS 

it  reflects  a  perfectly  simple  fact  of  those  old  days  in  a 
dramatic  form  which  has  already  absorbed  sundry  epic 
elements,  and,  by  the  hazard  and  imperfections  of  record, 
has  dropped  sundry  choral  and  dramatic  features,  re- 
ducing its  incremental  repetition,  and  evidently  cutting 
out  many  details.  What  carried  it  as  actual  "  ballad," 
held  the  swing  of  the  dancers,  and  contributed  in  no 
small  degree  to  its  vogue,  was  the  refrain,  which  was 
sung  as  a  chorus  alternating  with  the  lines  of  the  text, 
not  as  a  "  burden  "  or  undersong  :  — 

"  Sir  Henry  and  his  brothers,  brothers  all  three, 

—  With  power  — 

They  built  them  a  boatie,  a  boatie  for  the  sea, 

—  All  for  the  noble  roseflower. 

"  And  when  the  boatie,  the  boatie  ready  was, 

—  With  power  — 

They  sat  them  all  within  it,  they  sailed  far  away, 

—  All  for  the  noble  roseflower. 

"  When  they  westward,  westward  well  had  come, 

—  W  ith  power  — 

There  stood  at  his  threshold  a  goldsmith's  son, 

—  All  with  the  noble  roseflower. 

"  '  Be  ye  now  welcome,  ye  gentles  all  three, 

—  So  fine  and  so  fair  — 

And  will  ye  now  mead,  or  will  ye  now  wine?' 

—  Said  the  noble  roseflower. 

" '  We  will  not  have  the  mead,  we  will  not  have  the  wine, 
—  With  power  — 
But  we  will  have  the  goldsmith's  daughter  so  fine 

—  The  noble  roseflower.' 


SIR   HENRY  149 

"'The  goldsmith's  daughter,  't  is  she  ye  shall  not  get, 

—  So  fine  and  so  fair  — 

For  all  to  Little  Loike  her  trothword  is  set, 

—  The  noble  roseflower.' 

"'Little  Loike,  his  bride  he  never  shall  get, 
—  With  power  — 
On  that  we  three  men  will  wager  our  necks 

—  For  the  noble  roseflower.' 

"  Little  Loike  he  drew  out  his  shining  brand 

—  With  power  — 

Henry's  little  finger  he's  hewed  from  the  hand 

—  For  the  noble  roseflower. 

"  Sir  Henry,  he  drew  out  his  shining  brand 

—  So  fine  and  so  fair  — 

Little  Loike's  head  he  has  hewed  sheer  away, 

—  For  the  noble  roseflower. 

" '  Lie  there,  thou  ancient,  thou  curly  poU, 

—  With  power  — 

My  heart  with  a  thousand  joys  it  is  full 

—  For  the  noble  roseflower.' 

"  Little  Loike's  children  they  wept  so  sore 

—  With  power  — 
'Tomorrow  we  must  bury  our  father  dear 

— For  the  noble  roseflower.'  " 

This  old  ballad  was  thought  by  Miillenhoff  to  have  been 
in  its  original  form  a  kind  of  sword-dance;  ^  but  as  it 
stands,  it  was  used  for  a  very  strenuous  and  very  drama- 
tic dance,  full  of  adventurous  steps  and  gestures,  in  which 
all  the  festal  throng  took  part.    In  its  long  career,  as  we 

*  See  Chambers,  Mediaeval  Stage,  chap,  ix,  for  the  popular  origins 
and  the  survivals  in  England. 


150  THE  BALLADS 

have  said,  it  has  surely  suffered  both  abbreviation  and 
corruption  of  the  text;  for  the  original  "  ballad  "  we  must 
restore  the  activity  and  purpose  of  Henry's  brothers, 
here  inactive,  silent,  and  apparently  superfluous.  Their 
parts  have  been  cut.  So,  in  many. French  ballads,  three 
girls,  three  young  fellows,  three  cavaliers,  three  barons, 
three  drummers,  and  so  on,  appear  in  due  introduction; 
but  only  one  of  the  three  does  or  says  anything.  The  others 
must  be  restored  by  analogy  with  longer,  fuller  ballads, — 
say  *'  Guenillon."  Here  three  cavaliers  pass  by  the  wood; 
the  oldest  cries,  "  I  see  a  girl,"  the  next,  "  She  sleeps,"  but 
the  youngest,  "She  shall  be  my  love,"  —  each  in  a  stanza 
interlaced  with  the  next,  and  with  refrain  and  constant 
incremental  repetition.  Some  ballads,  of  course,  refuse 
to  be  cut;  what  would  "Babylon"  be  without  the  two 
sisters,  and  their  fate,  as  foil  to  the  third  ?  But  in  the 
main  it  was  as  obvious  to  cut  the  repetitions  as  it  was 
to  insert  new  details;  and  one  may  thus  conjecture  that 
the  original  "Sir  Henry"  had  little  of  the  narrative  in- 
troduction, but  a  great  deal  more  spinning  out  of  the 
situation,  more  of  the  fight,  and  a  succession  of  speeches 
by  the  three  brothers,  with  the  same  insistent  and  in- 
cremental repetition  that  one  finds  in  the  Faroe  ballad, 
itself  a  dramatic  presentation,  at  the  dance,  of  a  maid 
stolen  by  Frisian  pirates. 

Cut  loose  from  the  dance,  such  a  ballad  could  linger, 
like  "Babylon,"  in  the  middle  way  of  tradition,  holding 
the  ancient  structure  by  reason  of  the  central  situation 
and  its  needs,  and  appealing  to  epic  interest  by  tragic 


NATURAL  VARIANTS  161 

complication  and  climax.  It  could  fall,  as  we  have  said, 
into  one  of  two  classes;  it  would  tend  to  the  local  and 
domestic  sort,  or  to  the  general  and  the  romantic,  the 
ballad  of  international  type.  In  the  first  case,  mainly 
tragic,  the  story  grows  out  of  a  simple  dramatic  situation, 
is  localized,  and  while  not  necessarily  "true,"  needs  no 
alien  elements  to  explain  it.  It  may  acquire  some  ro- 
mantic details  in  its  course;  but  it  remains  a  simple  tale 
oF  love  and  obstacles,  flight,  fight,  and  death.  This, 
at  least,  is  the  course  of  "Earl  Brand,"  known  also  by 
Scott's  version  of  "The  Douglas  Tragedy,"  localized 
near  Yarrow  banks,  and  by  Percy's  artificial  "Child  of 
Ell;"  it  is  the  story,  found  in  many  European  ballads, 
notably  in  the  Scandinavian  "Ribold  and  Guldborg" 
and  "Hildebrand  and  Hilde,"  and  perhaps  based  on  the 
old  Hilde  saga,  of  a  girl  who  elopes,  is  intercepted  by 
her  father  and  her  seven  bold  brethren,  or  simply  by 
the  brothers,  and  sees  them  all  slain  by  her  lover,  who 
then  rides  home  with  her  to  his  mother's  bower,  a  mor- 
tally wounded  man.  In  some  of  the  Hilde  versions,  how- 
ever, the  elopement  is  happily  achieved;  and  these  have 
a  parallel,  if  not  a  descendant,  in  "Erlinton,"  closely 
related  to  "Earl  Brand,"  where  the  outlaw  has  killed 
the  fifteen  knights  but  spared  the  "auld,  grey-headed" 
leader,  and  says  to  his  bride :  — 

'"Now  ye'r  my  ain,  I  have  ye  win, 

And  we  will  walk  the  green  woods  within.' " 

In  ballads  of  this  first  or  purely  domestic  class,  one 
invokes  no  metaphysical  aid ;  no  unnatural  or  supernatu- 


152  THE  BALLADS 

ral  element  intervenes.    "  She  is  an  honest  woman,"  says 
dying  Earl  Brand  as  he  rides  up  to  his  mother  and  de- 
fends the  runaway  bride  from  a  hasty  charge  of  wanton- 
ness;  "marry  her  to  my  brother."    AH  the  characters  are 
fair  flesh  and  blood ;  the  ballad  is  a  piece  of  the  wild  old 
life  in  primitive  days,  and  originally  nothing  more.    To 
the  simple  dramatic  foundation,  indeed,  have  come-«pi€ 
features,  derived  from  whatever  immediate  source,  but 
common  to  many  European  versions,  such  as  Carl  Hood 
the  informer,  who  may  be  Woden  himself  if  one  will, 
and  the  dying  man's  ride  home.    The  name  Brand  may 
be  from  Hildebrand.      Certain  phrases  of  the  Danish 
are  repeated  almost  word  for  word  in  the  English;  though 
the  latter  has  failed  to  appropriate  the  important  climax 
of  the  fight  where  the  maiden  names  her  lover's  name 
and  so,  by  the  old  belief,  robs  him  of  his  supernatural 
or  unwonted  power.     But  whether  this  main  situation, 
the  fact  of  flight,  interception,  and  fight,  repeated  as  it 
is  by  the  nature  of  the  case  in  every  story  of  the  kind, 
needs  to  be  an  importation  from  abroad  or  even  a  descent 
from  older  tales,  is  questionable.  It  was  certainly  no  new 
thing. 

Supernatural  forces,  on  the  other  hand,  along  with  a 
distinctly  novel  and  striking  fact,  are  at  work  from  the 
outset  in  ballads  of  the  "Lady  Isabel"  type.  "Lady 
Isabel  and  the  Elf  Knight,"  which  has  "perhaps  .  .  . 
the  widest  circulation "  in  all  balladry,  and  claims  over 
thirty  pages  of  Professor  Child's  masterly  introduction, 
owes  its  importance  to  its  story  and  its  story  to  widely 


SUPERNATURAL   VARIANTS  153 

related  narrative  elements.  A  woman,  charmed  by  mystic 
horn  or  harp,  by  haunting  echo  of  song,  rides  off  to  un- 
canny places,  to  lone  nook  of  the  forest,  to  Wearie's  Well, 
to  a  "rank  river,"  a  sea,  with  the  elfin  knight,  or  with 
his  counterpart,  whom  she  has  failed  to  detect,  as  her 
wiser  sister  did,  and  dismiss  with  a  posing  riddle.  What- 
ever we  do  with  that  irrelevant  bird  in  an  English  version, 
the  elf  is  no  ordinary  lover,  and  the  elopement  is  from 
no  healthy  impulse  as  in  "Earl  Brand."  Birds,  again, 
reveal  the  fate  of  Isabel's  predecessors  in  sundry  conti- 
nental ballads;  in  one  case  these  are  turned  to  doves, 
and  coo  a  timely  warning.  The  severed  head  of  the  baf- 
fled betrayer  speaks,  and  cunningly  suggests  magic  which 
shall  restore  him  to  life.  In  most  of  the  versions  the  girl 
escapes;  but  in  "Young  Andrew  "  ^  there  is  a  different 
tale.  She  asks  her  merely  mortal  lover  to  marry  her. 
"  Bring  your  father's  gold,  then,"  he  says.  This  done,  he 
leads  her  to  a  hill  and  strips  her  of  her  fine  clothes,  as 
in  the  Isabel  group;  she  goes  home  only  to  die  at  the 
door,  while  Andrew  is  properly  but  mysteriously  de- 
voured by  a  wolf,  —  maudlin  tragedy,  harrowing  but 
alien  stuff  fitted  awkwardly  into  the  ballad  of  tradition. 
The  best  and  oldest  of  the  Isabel  versions  in  Endish 
are  very  brief;  only  by  combination  of  all,  good  and 
bad,  can  one  make  out  the  story  as  a  whole.  Two  the- 
ories account  for  it.  According  to  Professor  Bugge,  it  is 
Judith  and  Holofernes  retold  and  retouched.  Professor 
Child,  with  some  concession  to  Judith,  prefers  "  an  inde- 
*  No.  48,  from  the  Percy  MS. 


154  THE   BALLADS 

pendent  European  tradition  ...  of  a  half -human,  half- 
demonic  being,  who  possessed  an  irresistible  power  of 
decoying  away  young  maids  and  was  wont  to  kill  them 
.  .  .  but  who  at  last  found  one  who  was  more  than  his 
match.".  Modified,  this  story  appears  also  in  the  Blue- 
beard tales.  That  it  is  a  good  story,  whatever  its  origin, 
no  candid  reader  will  deny ;  but  it  is  not  necessary  to  find 
its  trail  in  every  ballad  of  elopement.  The  "Fair  Flower 
of  Northumberland,"^  for  example,  where  an  English 
lady  frees  a  Scot  from  prison  and  flies  with  him,  but  is 
cruelly  used  and  deserted  on  Scottish  soil,  needs  no  elfin 
explanation  of  the  man's  brutality,  nor  yet  a  source 
in  the  Halewijn  ballads  of  Flanders,  particularly  in 
Halewijn's  offer  of  a  choice  between  gallows  and  sword. 
Both  in_the  very  small  group  where  supernatural  ele- 
ments occur,  and  in  the  large  "domestic"  group,  the 
hero,  by  modern  ways  of  thinking,  is  more  or  less  brutal; 
indeed  Child  Waters  himself,  by  his  main  treatment  of 
Fair  Ellen,  could  give  points  even  to  Bill  Sykes.  But 
that  was  the  medieval  way. 

A  third  class  of  these  ballads,  freed  from  all  choral 
and  dramatic  constraint,  without  even  a  refrain,  and  yet 
encumbered  by  no  supernatural  elements,  could  tread 
a  romantic  path  that  was  broad  and  easy  and  long.  At 
7  the  extreme  from  all  the  leaping  and  throbbing  of  the 
Holstein  song  about  Sir  Henry  and  the  winning  of  his 
bride  is  the  ambling  gait  of  "King  Estmere."    Here  is 

*  No.  9.    The  epic  element  is  pronounced,  but  version  C  has  ample 
traces  of  the  choral  form,  and  Deloney's  copy  (A)  has  its  refrain. 


KING   ESTMERE  155 

a  gentlemanly  monarch,  no  protagonist,  who  takes  coun- 
sel and  help  of  his  wise  brother,^  Adler  Young,  and  seeks 
as  wife  the  daughter  of  King  Adland.  Together  the 
brothers  ride;  together  they  woo;  and  the  betrothal 
duly  takes  place,  not  without  features  which  suggest  Sieg- 
fried's longer  courting  in  the  "Nibelungen."  Then  comes 
romantic  danger  in  the  shape  of  a  "paynim,"  —  surely 
Percy's  own  word.  The  King  of  Spain  intervenes;  but 
by  the  "gramarye"  of  Adler  Young,  who  returns  dis- 
guised as  boy  to  Estmere,  now  in  the  familiar  lendings 
of  a  harper,  this  foul  "sowdan"  is  ignominiously  baffled, 
with  all  his  fighting  men  looking  helplessly  on,  and  is 
killed  out  of  hand. 

Of  elopement  ballads  which  belong  to  the  older  period, 
and  show  elements  of  romance  or  myth  linking  them 
to  versions  current  throughout  Europe,  "Fair  Annie" 
has  been  already  described.  "Gil  Brenton"  ^  has  the 
same  romantic  interest,  and  the  same  averting  of  tragedy, 
in  a  closely  allied  plot;  the  long  Scottish  version,  taken 
down  from  recitation  in  1783,  holds  many  primitive 
ballad  traits,  dwells  on  the  dramatic  situation,  and  is 
filled  with  incremental  repetition   almost  from  end  to 

*  Will  Stewart  and  John,  no.  107,  seems  to  be  a  degenerate  Estmere. 
It  is  ridiculous  in  parts,  for  the  hero  takes  to  his  bed  at  every  rebuff; 
but  it  has  interesting  "allusions  to  manners  and  customs."  The  super- 
fluous "  Adlatts  Parke"  of  the  first  stanza  can  hardly  be  a  recollection 
of  King  Adland's  demesne;  but  the  brothers  are  understudies,  con- 
scious or  not,  of  King  Estmere  and  Adler  Young;  as  we  are  told,  — 

"  William  he  is  the  elder  brother. 
But  John  he  is  the  wiser  man." 
^  No.  5. 


156  THE  BALLADS 

end.  Refrains,  too,  are  preserved  with  the  majority  of 
the  versions.  In  the  story,  Gil  Brenton  brings  home  his 
bride,  and  sevenscore  ships  with  her;  but  as  she  comes 
near  the  house,  she  weeps,  and  her  page  puts  a  good 
old  triad  of  questions :  — 

"  '  O  is  there  water  i'  your  shee  ? 

Or  does  the  win'  blaw  in  your  glee  ? 

"  '  Or  are  you  mourning  i'  your  meed 
That  eer  you  left  your  mither  gueede  ? 

"  '  Or  are  you  mourning  i'  your  tide 

That  ever  ye  was  Gil  Brenton's  bride.'  "  * 

In  corresponding  stanzas  of  repetition,  she  denies 
questions  one  and  two,  but  admits  the  truth  of  the  third. 
"Willie  the  page  —  the  bride  appears  with  no  name  — 
tells  her  that  Gil  Brenton  has  sent  home  already  seven 
king's  daughters,  badly  damaged,  because  they  were 
not  leal  maids.  Frightened,  for  good  reasons,  she  tries 
the  expedient  of  Ysoude  and  Brangwain,  substituting 
her  bower-woman;  but  miraculously  speaking  blankets, 
sheets,  and  pillows  tell  Gil  Brenton  the  truth.  His  angry 
mother  now  puts  questions,  and  finds  out  from  the  bride 
that  once  she  met  a  knight  in  greenwood,  who  left  tokens 
with  her,  easily  recognized  by  the  auld  queen  as  belong- 
ing to  Gil  Brenton.  So  all  is  well,  and  a  son  is  soon 
born ;  and  for  superfluity  of  confirmation  — 

" .  .  .  it  was  well  written  on  his  breast-bane, 
'  Gil  Brenton  is  my  father's  name.' " 

•  Shee  =  shoe;   glee  =  glove;  meed  =  mood;  gueede  =  good. 


GIL  BRENTON  157 

Ballads  of  this  kind  have  the  double  value,  first,  of 
fidehty  to  the  old  way  in  their  almost  choral  structure, 
their  dramatic  style,  their  descent  by  purely  oral  tradi- 
tion, and,  secondly,  of  the  new  epic  and  romantic  inter- { 
est  which  they  share  with  the  Scandinavian  and  other 
versions.  The  new  interest  gets  full  justice  in  an  absorb- 
ing story  and  a  good  climax;  the  old  interest  remains 
not  only  in  structure  and  style,  but  in  details,  in  the  im- 
portance attached  to  mere  changes  of  the  situation :  — 

"The  auld  queen  she  was  stark  and  Strang; 
She  gar'd  the  door  flee  aff  the  ban'. 

"  The  auld  queen  she  was  stark  and  steer; 
She  gar'd  the  door  lye  i'  the  fleer."  ^ 

Robustious  as  she  is,  the  auld  queen  plays  a  serviceable 
part  here  and  smooths  a  rough  path  for  the  bride;  in 
"Willie's  Lady,"  close  to  "Gil  Brenton"  in  form  and 
derived  from  the  same  traditional  source,  the  mother- 
in-law  is  evil-disposed  and  long  prevents  by  her  witch- 
craft the  birth  of  Willie's  son. 

From  these  fine  ballads  we  pass  all  too  rapidly  down 
a  steep  path  to  the  common  tales  of  runaways  fair  or 
foul,  most  of  them  localized  in  Scotland  and  many  of 
them  dropping  to  very  low  levels  of  verse.  One  or  two 
of  them,  however,  belong  to  the  kingdom  of  romance. 
Brown   Robin, ^   disguised   as   one  of  his   love's  thirty- 

*  A  similar  pair  of  couplets  in  the  Danish  ballad  Valdemar  og  Tove 
(Olrik,  B),  37,  38,  which  dates  from  MSS.  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
2  The  ballads  now  cited  are  nos.  97,  102,  103,  106,  109,  108. 


158  THE  BALLADS 

three  Maries,  or  bower-women,  escapes  with  her  to  the 
wood :  — 

"  O  she  went  out  in  a  May  morning, 
In  a  May  morning  so  gay; 
But  she  came  never  back  again, 
Her  auld  father  to  see." 

"Wilhe  and  Earl  Richard's  Daughter"  purports  to 
account,  by  hke  love  and  a  later  elopement,  for  the  birth 
of  Robin  Hood  "in  the  gude  green  wood,  amang  the 
lily  flower;"  but  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  Robin 
Hood  cycle.  Rose  the  Red  and  White  Lily,  ill-treated 
by  their  stepmother,  take  to  the  woods  of  their  own 
motion,  and  get  into  fine  complications;  but  their  forest 
is  of  pasteboard  and  the  ballad  has  no  good  greenwood 
sights  or  sounds.  Even  less  value  attaches  to  "The  Fa- 
mous Flower  of  Serving-Men,"  where  fair  Elise  plays 
Cesario  to  a  king  and  marries  him,  and  to  the  doggerel 
"Thomas  of  Potte,"  or  "Tom  Potts,"  a  real  serving-man, 
who,  in  ninety-six  stanzas,  once  thrilled  a  humble  audi- 
ence, and  even  got  a  sneer  from  Swift,  over  adventures 
that  end  in  his  bridals  with  the  daughter  of  Lord  Arundel. 
"False  to  Potts  I'll  never  be,"  was  her  word  from  the 
start,  like  Mrs.  Micawber's;  but  it  is  interesting  to  see 
the  old  ballad  commonplaces  floundering  through  the 
mire  of  a  minstrel  broadside.  The  "little  foot-page" 
must  run  with  a  letter  to  the  lover  for  a  tip  of  forty 
shillings;  and  the  seventeenth- century  serving-man's 
point  of  view  is  made  even  more  conspicuous  by  the  fact 
that  good  news  in  the  answer  raises  our  messenger's 


BROADSIDE  DEGENERATES  159 

gratuity  to  a  gorgeous  ten  pound.  Another  poor  ballad, 
also  from  the  Percy  manuscript,  "Christopher  White," 
in  verses  equally  deject,  tells  how  the  wife  of  a  mer- 
chant, as  she  "sate  in  a  deske,"  sent  money  to  her  old 
lover,  a  banished  man ;  he  comes  back  in  the  merchant's 
absence,  and  proceeds  to  bolt  not  only  with  the  wife 
but  with  "spoone  and  plate,"  silver  and  gold.  The  mer- 
chant is  philosophical,  if  not  emotional  or  even  logical:  — 

",A11  young  men  a  warning  take, 

A  warning,  looke,  you  take  by  me  ; 
Looke  that  you  love  your  old  loves  best, 
For  in  faith  they  are  best  companye." 

"George  Barnwell"  looms  close  upon  us  here,  and 
it  is  a  far  call  from  "Gil  Brenton"  and  the  rest;  we  are 
dealing  with  the  degenerate  remnant  of  that  journalism 
noted  on  an  earlier  page,  although  a  very  faint  touch  of 
tradition  gives  it  a  claim  to  ballad  honors.  As  we  shall 
have  little  to  do  hereafter  with  the  broadside  style,  it 
may  be  well  now  to  point  out  that  it  never  occurs,  how- 
ever humble  the  environment  and  the  transmitters,  in 
genuine  ballads  of  tradition.  The  people  to  whom  these 
stall-copies  were  recited  or  sung  ^  or  sold  were,  to  be 
sure,  no  more  ignorant  or  humble  than  the  country  folk 
who  themselves  sang  and  recited  the  simple  but  always 
dignified  and  competent  verses  of  "Babylon"  or  "Gil 
Brenton;"  the  difference  lies  in  the  ballads,  one  living  in 

^  Singing,  however,  was  often  a  good  antiseptic.  Who  wants  to  quar- 
rel with  the  doggerel  inclinations  of  The  Bailiff's  Daughter  of  Isling- 
ton ?  Once  hear  it  (no.  105)  sung,  and  one  forgives  the  drone  of  the 
words. 


160  THE  BALLADS 

its  native  tradition,  another  getting  into  the  hands  of  min- 
strel or  printer  and  losing  all  but  the  faintest  reminiscence 
and  echo  of  its  origin.  Only  such  reminiscence,  such 
echo,  or  the  possibility  of  them,  justified  Professor  Child, 

^/^s  he  expressly  declares,  in  "suppressing  disgust"  and 
admitting    worthless    or    nearly    worthless    ballads,  — 

,  the  worthless  because  it  might  be  "a  debased  represent- 
"ative  of  something  genuine  and  better,"  and  the  others 
because  something  better,  however  little,  clung  to  them.* 
In  the  first  of  these  classes  may  be  ranged  three  inferior 
ballads  ^  which  deal  with  international  love-affairs. 
Johnie  Scot  goes  to  the  English  court,  loves  the  king's 
daughter,  and  hies  back  to  Scotland;  her  disgrace  is 
discovered  and  she  is  put  in  prison  to  starve.  Johnie 
returns  with  five  hundred  men,  fights  "an  Italian" 
whom  the  king  keeps,  slays  him,  and  wins  the  daughter. 
Willie  o'  Winsbury,  in  like  predicament,  is  so  blind- 
ingly  and  blushingly  blond,  clad  in  silk  and  scarlet,  — 

"  His  hair  was  like  to  threeds  o'  gold, 

And  his  skin  was  as  white  as  milk,"  — 

that  the  king  yields  at  once.  "Take  Janet,"  he  says;  and 
Willie,  like  his  countryman  Johnie  Scot,  insists  that 
there  shall  be  no  dower,  —  a  daring  fiction.  "Lang 
Johnny  More"  is  a  mere  imitation,  almost  a  parody, 
as  Mr.  Child  says,  of  "Johnie  Scot;"  and  is, unconscion- 
ably long. 

'  See  the  Introduction  to  Young  Ronald,  no.  304,  v,  182.  Cf.  The 
Knight's  Ghost,  no.  265 ;  Mr.  Child  says  that  it  "  has  not  a  globule  of 
old  blood." 

'  Nos.  99.  100,  251. 


ELOPEMENTS  161 

A  larger  group  of  ballads  *  deal  with  local  elopement 
and  bride-stealing;  some  of  these  Scottish  verses  are 
based  on  fact.  The  best  of  them,  "Katharine  Jaffray," 
whether  itself  the  work  of  Scott  or  compiled  from  tra- 
dition, was  certainly  the  model  for  his  "Young  Loch- 
invar;"  it  tells  of  bride-stealing  in  two  senses.  A 
Scots  laird  snatches  his  former  Scots  sweetheart  from 
his  English  rival  on  the  very  day  of  the  wedding,  and 
rides  off  with  her  safe  from  pursuit.  Mr.  Child  notes 
that  "the  attitude  of  the  young  woman  to  her  first 
lover  is  not  distinctly  brought  out  in  several  copies;" 
perhaps  it  did  not  matter.  In  "Lord  William,"  —  or 
"Lord  Lundy, "  —  valuable  chiefly  because  it  comes 
from  recitation,  the  bride  is  forced  into  marriage,  but 
is  rescued  by  her  old  lover.  "Bonny  Baby  Livingston," 
in  another  traditional  ballad,  borne  off  to  the  High- 
lands for  a  forced  marriage,  gets  word  to  her  lover, 
Johny  Hay,  and  is  rescued  with  all  the  honors.  Eppie 
Morrie,  again,  is  the  Scottish  Brunhild;  though  carried 
to  a  castle  and  left  with  her  would-be  husband,  she 
defends  herself  stoutly  until  morning,  when  the  Lowland 
lover  brings  her  help.  Even  more  intrepid  is  the  un- 
named heroine  of  a  late  but  jolly  little  piece,  "Walter 
Lesly,"  with  an  effective  refrain;  tied  on  horseback  and 
taken  to  an  alehouse  on  the  way  to  "Conland,"  she 
slips  off  while  Walter  indulges  in  a  very  intempestive 
nap. 

'  Printed  by  Child  in  his  fourth  volume.    The  numbers  are  from 
221  on,  and  need  not  be  further  noted.  —  Walter  Lesly  is  no.  296. 


162  THE  BALLADS 

"  Then  over  moss  and  over  muir  sae  cleverly  she  ran, 
And  over  hill  and  over  dale,  without  stockings  or  shoon; 
The  men  pursued  her  full  fast,  wi'  mony  shout  and  cry, 
Says,  '  Will  ye  go  to  Conland,  the  winter-time  to  lye  ? ' 

'"I'd  rather  be  in  Duffus  land,  dragging  at  the  ware, 
Before  I  was  wi'  Lesly,  for  a'  his  yellow  hair. 
For  a'  his  yellow  hair,  and  sae  well's  he  can  it  tye; 
I  '11  go  no  more  to  Conland,  this  winter-time  to  lye.' " 

Another  heroine,  in  "  Droughty  Wa's,"  swims  her  way 
to  freedom.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  these  random 
ballads  were  often  "founded  on  fact;"  the  case  is  clear 
for  a  fragment  called  "The  Lady  of  Arngosk."  Isobell 
Dow,  in  1823,  remembered  this  bit  of  song  and  the  facts 
that  gave  rise  to  it;  the  rest  of  the  verses  she  had  for- 
gotten. Her  own  mother  was  waiting-maid,  about  1736, 
to  the  Lady  of  Arngosk,  a  Miss  Margaret  Gibb,  and 
often  told  the  daughter  how  Mr.  Graham,  a  Highlander, 
carried  off  mistress  and  maid  to  Braco  Castle,  and  se- 
cured them  in  an  upper  room  till  morning,  when  Mr. 
Jamieson,  the  favored  lover,  appeared  with  hue  and  cry 
and  forced  Graham  to  surrender  his  prisoners  unharmed. 
Whereupon,  of  course,  the  countryside  rang  with  a  bal- 
lad, which  C.  K.  Sharpe,  the  well-known  collector,  had 
heard  in  his  youth,  but  of  which  he  could  remember 
only  one  stanza.  Helped  a  trifle  more  by  Isobell  Dow, 
whose  memory  also  failed  her,  Sharpe,  in  1823,  could 
print  only  these  opening  verses:  — 

"The  Highlandmen  hae  a'  come  down, 
They've  a'  come  down  almost. 
They've  stowen  away  the  bonny  lass. 
The  Lady  of  Arngosk. 


ELOPEMENTS  163 

"  They  hae  put  on  her  petticoat, 
Likewise  her  silken  gown; 
The  Highland  man  he  drew  his  sword, 
Said,  '  Follow  me  ye 's  come.' 

"Behind  her  back  they've  tied  her  hands. 

And  then  they  set  her  on; 

*  I  winna  gang  wi'  you,'  she  said, 

'Nor  ony  Highland  loon.'  " 

So  local  history  found  its  way  into  ballads. 

But  the  lady  in  the  case  did  not  always  fare  so  well, 
as  the  ballad  of  "Rob  Roy"  can  testify.^  Jean  Key,  a 
widow  of  two  months,  was  carried  off  by  Rob  Oig, 
younger  son  of  Scott's  hero,  and  forcibly  married  to  him, 
dying  within  a  year,  while  the  MacGregor  himself  was 
tried  and  executed  for  his  crime.  Less  tragic  is  "  John  o' 
Hazelgreen,"  where  Scott  found  the  refrain  of  his  song; 
a  gentleman  abducts  a  girl  who  is  moaning  for  John, 
and  rides  off  with  her,  despite  her  tears,  only  to  take  her 
to  his  own  house  and  be  welcomed  by  his  own  son,  — 
who  turns  out  to  be  John  of  Hazelgreen. 

There  are  ballads,  again,  where  the  lass  is  willing, 
but  the  parents  are  opposed.  Duncan  Grahame,  a  High- 
lander, persuades  Bonny  Lizie  Bailie  to  marry  him,  — 

"  And  she' s  up  to  Gillecrankie 
To  go  among  the  heather. 

"And  she's  cast  off  her  high-heel'd  shoes 
And  put  on  a  pair  of  laigh  ones. 
And  she's  away  with  Duncan  Grahame 
To  go  among  the  brachans." 

*  See  Scott's  Introduction  to  his  Rob  Roy.    The  date  of  the  occur- 
rence was  1750, 


164  THE   BALLADS 

Lizie  Lindsay  flies  from  Edinburgh  with  a  young  fel- 
low who  says  his  father  is  an  old  shepherd,  takes  her 
through  rough  ways  till  she  wishes  herself  home,  and 
finally  reveals  himself  as  Sir  Donald.  Glasgow  Peggie 
goes  through  the  same  experiences  to  find  herself 
Countess  of  Skye.^  In  these  ballads,  disordered  though 
they  seem  to  be,  and  favorites  as  they  were  in  the 
stalls,  there  are  glimpses  of  the  old  choral  beginnings. 
One  comes  now  and  again  on  the  trail  of  really  dramatic 
versions,  but  does  not  find  them;  although  it  is  known 
that  ballads  like  "Andrew  Lammie"  were  actually  pre- 
sented as  a  kind  of  rural  play.  Dugald  Quin,^  who  courts 
Lizzie  Menzies,  wins  her  despite  her  father,  and  turns 
out  to  be  a  well-conditioned  man,  —  the  Old  Lady's 
Manuscript  notes  that  he  was  Marquis  of  Huntly,  — 
carries  on  his  wooing  in  a  jolly  dialogue  full  of  repetition 
and  lilt  of  the  dance;  there  is  hardly  narrative  enough 
for  a  ballad,  comments  Professor  Child,  and  it  is  all  the 
nearer  to  choral  song.  There  is  the  same  lilt,  the  same 
lively  dialogue,  in  "The  Beggar  Laddie,"  as  well  as  in 
"The  Duke  of  Gordon's  Daughter;"  this  young  person 
elopes  with  her  captain,  who  falls  heir,  in  the  nick  of 
time,  to  an  earldom.  Young  Peggy  runs  away  in  unex- 
citing style;  but  Lady  Elspat  is  intercepted  in  her  flight 
and  the  lover  is  haled  before  a  justice  who  turns  out  to 
be  his  uncle:   all,  in  fact,  ends  well  except  the  ballad, 

*  Different  uses  of  this  well-worn  motive  are  found  in  The  Broom 
of  the  Cowdenknowes  and  in  The  Jolly  Beggar. 
2  No.  294. 


ELOPEMENTS  165 

which,  as  Mr.  Child  remarks,  is  "not  impressive."    In 

"Glenlogie,"  where,  again,  the  ancient  structure  is  well 

maintained,  an  impetuous  girl  falls  in  love  with  a  man 

already  engaged,  and  her  parents  will  do  nothing;    but 

the  good  chaplain,  in  a  travesty  of  the  relative-climax, 

writes  so  eloquently  to  Glenlogie  that  the  laird  yields  at 

once: — 

"'Cheer  up,  bonnie  Jeannie,  ye  are  flow'r  o'  them  a'; 

I  have  laid  my  love  on  you,  altho  I  was  promised  awa'.' " 

Reminiscent  of  "  Tom  Potts "  in  subject  but  not  in 
manner  are  two  ballads  which  tell  how  a  lady  elopes  with 
her  inferior:  "Richie  Story,"  founded  on  fact,  where 
repetition  and  refrain  partly  cloak  poor  stuff,  and  "The 
Kitchie  Boy,"  a  very  bad  reminder  of  "Hind  Horn."  ^ 

So  much,  barring  a  brace  of  quite  negligible  attempts, 
for  the  ballads  of  bride-stealing  and  elopement.  At  their 
best  they  echo  the  new  call  of  romance  with  the  old  voice 
and  phrase  of  tradition ;  at  their  worst  they  are  neverthe- 
less fairly  representative  of  their  times,  reflecting  the  life 
of  rural  and  isolated  Scottish  communities,  even  if  Willie 
of  Douglas  Dale,^  who  made  a  wife  of  his  highborn  sweet- 
heart, took  her  to  the  wood  as  day  dawned  "and  lions 
gaed  to  their  dens ! "  This  glimpse  of  perilous  and  fearsome 
adventure,  however,  was  not  all.  Tradition  laid  hold  of  a 
theme  well  known  in  European  tales,  and  sang  in  two 
sterling  ballads  ^  the  trials  and  triumph  of  lovers  who 

1  Compare  Lady  Diamond,  no.  269,  a  poor  echo  of  Boccaccio's 
Guiscardo  and  Ghismonda,  with  the  lover  a  "kitchen-boy." 

2  No.  101. 

3  Nos.  25,  96. 


/ 


166  THE  BALLADS 

baffle  the  opposition  of  kinsfolk,  outwit  the  vigilance  of 
brothers  and  parents,  and  meet  happily  at  last.  "Willie's 
Lyke-Wake,"  an  old,  two-line,  traditional  ballad,  with 
refrain  and  constant  repetition,  tells  how  the  hero  feigns 
death,  and  his  love  comes  to  the  wake.  The  corresponding 
Swedish  version,  immensely  popular,  is  "often  repre- 
sented as  a  drama  by  young  people  in  country-places." 
The  other  of  our  ballads  reverses  the  roles  of  man  and 
maid.  In  the  "Gay  Goshawk,"  a  bird  brings  an  English 
girl  her  Scottish  lover's  letter  to  the  effect  that  he  cannot 
wait  her  love  longer.  "  Bid  him  bake  his  bridal  bread  and 
brewhis  bridal  ale,"  she  answers, "  and  I '11  meethim."  She 
goes  to  her  father  and  asks  one  boon :  "  if  I  die,  bury  me  in 
Scotland."  She  takes  a  "sleepy draught,"  —  the  device  is 
familiar  in  romance,  —  seems  dead,  and  is  carried,  as  she 
directed  in  the  usual  incremental  stanzas,  repeated  at  the 
fulfillment  of  them,  from  kirk  to  kirk,  until  her  lover  meets 
her  on  safe  ground.  The  seven  brothers,  amazed  at  cherry 
cheeks  and  ruby  lips,  are  sent  home  "to  sound  the  horn," 
outwitted  by  one  more  clever  lass  in  the  long  epic  series. 

II.     BALLADS    OF    KINSHIP 

The  mention  of  sister  and  brothers  carries  us  to  the 
large  group  of  ballads  that  deal  with  complications  of 
household  and  kin.  Tragedy  hovers  over  these,  and,  as 
in  the  case  of  their  highborn  rivals  from  the  Oresteia  to 
"Hamlet,"  seldom  fails  to  fall  upon  them.  Doggerel  itself 
cannot  hide  in  them  the  dignity  of  tragic  passion;  but 
when  that  old  simplicity  of  repetition  is  allowed  to  do  the 


BEWICK  AND   GRAHAM  167 

work  alone,  to  carry  the  hopeless  struggle  of  personality 
against  fate,  and  when  the  traditional  note  is  untroubled, 
then  the  ballad  achieves  those  results  which  make  the 
critic  claim  it  as  art.  We  may,  for  the  first  of  these  cases, 
regret  the  contamination  of  broadside  style,  but  we  can- 
not help  admiring  the  genuine  pathos  of  a  "Bewick  and 
Graham"  in  the  dilemma  where  choice  halts  between  two 
duties,  both  of  them  sacred  yet  mutually  destructive,  the 
flaming  sword  over  each  path,  and  no  God  to  intervene. 
We  know  how  a  Greek  chorus  swells  the  agony  of  this 
choice,  and  how  soliloquy  after  soliloquy  of  Hamlet, 
speech  after  speech  of  Rodrigue,  rebel  against  it;  our 
ballad,  already  far  gone  in  broadside  ways,  can  still 
sustain  the  old  note  in  however  deplorable  style.  Bewick 
and  Graham  ^  are  two  young  men  living  near  Carlisle 
who  have  "sworn  brotherhood,"  perhaps,  as  Scott  says, 
"the  very  latest  allusion"  to  this  ancient  rite;  but  their 
fathers  quarrel  over  the  wine,  and  old  Graham  goes 
home  half  drunk  and  whole  angry  to  tell  his  son  that 
there  must  be  a  fight  to  the  finish  for  the  brothers-in- 
arms. Most  significant  is  the  difference  in  style  between 
the  original  dialogue,  which  carries  the  two  main  situa- 
tions as  well  as  the  preliminary  quarrel,  and  the  doggerel 
minstrel  verse  which  completes  and  fills  out  the  "story." 
Force,  dignity,  delicacy,  little  marred  in  the  transfer  to  a 
stall-copy,  are  set  over  against  helplessness  of  expression 
and  dragging  verse.  Take  the  part  where  Graham  tells 
his  son  that  the  fight  must  be  fought. 

'  No.  211.    Contrast  stanza  7  with  the  dialogue  quoted  ! 


168  THE   BALLADS 

"  '  Oh,  pray  forbear,  my  father  dear  ; 
That  ever  such  a  thing  should  be  I 
Shall  I  venture  my  body  in  field  to  fight 
With  a  man  that 's  faith  and  troth  to  me?' 

" '  What 's  that  thou  sayst,  thou  limmer  loon  ? 
Or  how  dare  thou  stand  to  speak  to  me? 
If  thou  do  not  end  this  quarrel  soon, 
Here  is  my  glove,  thou  shalt  fight  me.' 

"Christy  stoop'd  low  unto  the  ground. 

Unto  the  ground,  as  you  '11  understand  ! 
'O  father,  put  on  your  glove  again, 

The  wind  hath  blown  it  from  your  hand.' 

"'What 's  that  thou  sayst,  thou  limmer  loon? 
Or  how  dare  thou  stand  to  speak  to  me? 
If  thou  do  not  end  this  quarrel  soon. 
Here  is  my  hand,  thou  shalt  fight  me.' 

"Christy  Grahame  is  to  his  chamber  gone, 
And  for  to  study,  as  well  might  be. 
Whether  to  fight  with  his  father  dear, 
Or  with  his  bully  Bewick  he. 

" '  If  it  be  my  fortune  my  bully  to  kill,* 
As  you  shall  boldly  understand, 
In  every  town  that  I  ride  through. 

They  '11  say.  There  rides  a  brotherless  man! 

" '  Nay,  for  to  kill  my  bully  dear, 
I  think  it  will  be  a  deadly  sin; 
And  for  to  kill  my  father  dear. 

The  blessing  of  heaven  I  ne'er  shall  win. 

" '  O  give  me  my  blessing,  father,'  he  said, 
'  And  pray  well  for  me  for  to  thrive  ; 
If  it  be  my  fortune  my  bully  to  kill, 
I  swear  I'll  neer  come  home  alive.'  " 


BEWICK   AND   GRAHAM  169 

Protesting  their  love,  the  young  men  fight;  Graham 
wounds  Bewick  mortally,  but,  true  to  his  vow,  falls  on 
his  own  sword  and  dies.  Bewick  is  still  living  when  his 
father  comes  up :  — 

" '  Arise,  arise,  O  son,'  he  said, 

'  For  I  see  thou  's  won  the  victory.' 
'  Father,  could  ye  not  drunk  your  wine  at  home. 
And  letten  me  and  my  brother  be?'  " 

With  a  request  to  dig  a  grave  wide  and  deep,  and  to  bury 
them  both  in  it, —  "but  bury  my  bully  ^  Grahame  on  the 
sun-side,  for  I'm  sure  he's  won  the  victory," — young 
Bewick  has  done,  and  the  real  ballad  ends  ;  although  five 
stanzas  are  added  to  tell  of  the  contrition  of  the  two 
fathers.  It  is  sterling  stuff;  "infectious"  Mr.  Child  well 
calls  it. 

Nearly  every  family  relation  is  involved  in  these 
canticles  of  love  and  woe  which  come  from  the  very  heart 
of  traditional  song;  and  they  pass  by  obvious  transition 
into  the  other  group,  also  tragic  in  the  main,  of  stolen  or 
lawless  love.  But  even  here  is  no  tragedy  of  what  we  now 
call  romance;  it  is  not  a  private  grief,  given  in  a  kind  of 
confidence  to  the  reader;  it  is  the  tale  of  love  and  death 
as  a  community  would  voice  it,  square  to  the  facts  and 
going  not  a  handbreadth  beyond  them.  Even  in  the 
ballads  of  lovers,  interest  lies  outside,  as  it  were,  of  their 
private  fate.  While  it  cannot  be  said  of  balladry,  as  a 
recent  writer  has  said  of  early  Greek  dramatic  literature, 
that  there  is  "perfect  freedom  from  those  pairs  of  lovers 

'  Billy,  comrade. 


170  THE   BALLADS 

who  have  been  our  tyrants  since  modern  drama  began," 
it  is  true  that  ballad-lovers  are  free  from  our  curse  of 
sentiment.  There  is  approach  to  it  in  a  Scottish  ballad 
already  cited  as  a  favorite  for  dramatic  presentation 
among  the  Aberdeenshire  folk;  this  piece  may  now  be 
described  as  a  story  where  unequal  station,  the  united 
opposition  of  the  maid's  immediate  kin,  and  more  homely 
but  effective  blows  of  fate,  bring  love  to  a  swift  and  tragic 
end.  "Andrew  Lammie"  ^  is  in  the  modern  conven- 
tional style,  but  it  has  touches  of  the  old  way.  A  recurring 
stanza :  - — 

"  Love  pines  away,  love  dwines  away, 
Love,  love  decays  the  body; 
For  love  o'  thee,  oh,  I  must  die: 
Adieu  my  bonnie  Annie  !  "  — 

ought  to  be  artificial,  but  does  not  so  affect  us.  The 
figure  of  the  trumpeter,  Andrew,  blowing  his  last  fare- 
well —  "I  come,  my  bonnie  Annie  "  —  from  the  tower 
of  Fyvie  castle  to  the  mill  of  Tiftie  where  Annie  lies  beaten 
to  death  by  the  blows  of  father,  mother,  and  brother, 
is  a  picture  that  is  helped  neither  by  similar  scenes  in 
modern  sentimental  literature  nor  by  the  portrayal  of  it 
in  an  actual  image  of  the  lover,  set  up  on  one  of  the  cas- 
tle turrets;   still,  it  is  pathetic  enough  and  "justifies  the 

'  No.  233.  In  no.  239,  another  tragic  ballad,  Jeanie  is  forced  by  her 
parents  to  marry  Lord  Saltoun,  though  she  loves  Auchanachie  Gor- 
don. Brought  home  from  the  wedding,  she  dies  just  as  Gordon  returns 
and  asks  to  see  her :  — 

"  He  kissed  her  cold  lips,  which  were  colder  than  stone, 
And  he  died  in  the  chamber  that  Jeanie  died  in." 


EDWARD  171 

remarkable  popularity  which  the  ballad  has  enjoyed 
in  the  north  of  Scotland." 

Sentiment  of  this  kind,  however,  has  no  part  in  the  old  ] 
breed  of  ballads  which  tell  the  tragedy  of  kin.  The  naked 
rock  is  covered  by  no  vines  of  comment  or  suggestion ;  it 
is  all  hard  fact,  mainly  brought  out  by  a  dialogue  and  in 
a  dramatic  situation.  Some  of  these  ballads  are  too 
familiar  to  describe.  The  false  wife  and  wicked  motherl, 
is  revealed  only  by  the  very  last  line  of  "Edward,"  dia-  ^ 
logue  throughout :  — 

"  '  Sic  counseils  ye  gave  to  me.' " 

"Edward,"  which  the  latest  editor  of  the  "Minstrelsy'' 
calls  a  "doctored"  ballad,  with  its  hint  to  Heinrich  Heine 
for  one  of  the  finest  verses  in  the  "Two  Grenadiers," 
with  its  slow,  strong  movement,  its  effective  repetition,  its 
alternating  refrain  of  simple  vocatives,  may  be  "doc- 
tored ;"  but  would  that  its  physician  could  be  found! 

After  all,  it  is  rather  the  cruel  wife  of  which  "Edward  " 
tells  than  the  cruel  mother;  but  a  traditional  ballad^ 
of  the  old  two-line  pattern  with  a  refrain,  and  related  to 
certain  Danish  versions,  justifies  its  title.  The  young 
mother  kills  and  buries  her  babe  or  babes,  and  goes 
back  to  her  father's  hall  as  leal  maiden,  only  to  see  chil- 
dren playing  there,  who  reproach  her  with  her  crime :  — 

"  '  O  cursed  mother,  heaven's  high, 

And  that 's  vrhere  thou  will  ne'er  win  nigh. 

"  '  O  cursed  mother,  hell  is  deep, 

And  there  thou  '11  enter  step  by  step.'  " 

'   The  Cruel  Mother,  no.  20. 


172  THE  BALLADS 

Another  cruel  mother,  who  also  has  a  brief  chance  to 
play  the  cruel  mother-in-law,  gives  poison  to  her  son 
because  he  marries  against  her  will.^  Cruelty  in  these 
cases,  however,  was  felt  to  be  the  sin  against  nature;  and 
ballads,  though  by  no  means  so  frequently  in  our  English 
versions  as  elsewhere,  turn  for  material  to  the  stepmother 
and  to  the  mother-in-law.  A  German  scholar  and  his- 
torian of  ancient  things,  Professor  Schrader,  has  recently 
written  a  little  monograph  -  on  the  mother-in-law  which 
deserves  to  be  widely  known.  Referring  to  the  hackneyed 
stories,  allusions,  jokes,  of  modern  days,  Schrader  fol- 
lows the  tradition  through  popular  and  classic  literature 
back  to  its  source  in  the  evolution  of  the  family.  The 
fundamental  fact  is  the  relation  of  the  husband's  mother 
to  his  young  wife;  what  can  be  and  has  been  a  helpful, 
pleasant  alliance,  appears  at  certain  stages  of  culture,  par- 
ticularly represented  by  the  Russian  and  even  the  modern 
Greek  ballads,  as  unimagined  woe.  The  worst  stories 
come  directly  from  life,  and  ballad  or  tale  simply  follows 
fact,  —  a  hint  for  the  too  eager  discoverer  of  a  literary 
origin  for  every  narrative  in  verse.  A  few  English  pieces 
reflect,  however  faintly,  these  Greek  and  Russian  hor- 
rors; but  in  no  case  does  one  find  old  tragedy  warmed 
over  and  served  as  a  proper  new  jest.  Often  the  man's 
mother,  however  suspicious  of  the  bride,  gladly  takes 

'  Prince  Robert,  no.  87. 

^  Die  Schwieger mutter  und  der  Hagestolz,  Braunschweig,  1904. 
For  a  few  cases  of  the  bad  mother-in-law  in  continental  ballads,  see 
Professor  Child's  account  of  the  "Testament"  formula,  i,  143  f. 


THE   MOTHER-IxN-LAW  173 

charge  of  his  child,  as  in  "Earl  Brand"  and  in  the 
mawkish  "White  Fisher;"  in  the  finest  version  of  "Fair 
Janet,"  Willie  goes  with  the  new-born  babe  to  his  mother 
and  is  bidden  to  return  and  comfort  his  "fair  lady," 
while  the  "young  son"  shall  have  nurses  three.  In  "Gil 
Brenton  "  we  saw  the  mother-in-law  jealous  of  her  son's 
rights,  but  helpful  to  disentangle  a  bad  knot  and  prevent 
tragedy.  In  "Willie's  Lady,"  however,  a  two-line  piece 
from  Scottish  tradition,  our  bose  Schwiegermutter  stands 
out  plain  enough,  working,  by  foul  magic,  to  prevent  the 
son's  wife  from  bringing  forth  her  child;  the  Billie  Blin, 
"a  serviceable  household  demon,"  who  appears  in  three 
other  Scottish  ballads,  reveals  the  remedy  for  this  witch- 
craft. It  may  be  said  that  the  shadow  of  that  aversion  felt 
by  the  man's  mother  for  his  wife  is  a  kind  of  compensa-  i 
tion  for  the  close  relation  of  mother  and  son.  Matriarchy  I 
in  the  background  or  not,  the  ballads  give  vast  preference  [ 
to  the  maternal  as  compared  with  the  paternal  relation.  "1 
It  is  a  justified  suspicion  of  her  son's  sweetheart  which 
makes  the  mother  put  those  swift  and  throbbing  queries  in 
"Lord  Randal."  Mother,  wife,  and  brother  give  the  last  ^ 
consolations  to  Clerk  Colvill;  no  father  appears,  and  a 
tendency  to  neglect  that  important  personage  may  be  re- 
marked in  the  ballads  throughout.  Advice  comes  chiefly 
from  the  mother,  as  one  notes  in  the  best  version  of  "  Lord 
Thomas  and  Fair  Annet;"  the  addition  of  the  father  in 
some  other  versions  is  perfunctory;  while  in  "Edward," 
the  part  of  Orestes  is  reversed.  Tradition,  to  be  sure, 
would  always  set  the  matter  right,  if  facts  permitted,  and 


174  THE  BALLADS 

the  nearest  way  was  to  make  the  mother  and  her  counsels 
as  odious  as  might  be.  The  hard-hearted  mother-in-law 
personates  her  son,  and  ruthlessly  turns  his  true-love  from 
Gregory's  door,  in  a  familiar  and  pretty  ballad  known  in 
several  versions  and  by  different  titles,  —  "The  Lass  of 
Roch  Royal."  Poor  Isabel,  or  Annie,  goes  bajffled  to  her 
death,  and  Love  Gregory  wakes :  — 

" '  O  wo  be  to  you,  ill  woman, 

And  ane  ill  death  mott  you  die  ! 
F'or  you  might  have  come  to  my  bedside, 
And  then  have  wakened  me.'" 

The  same  complication,  only  that  the  mother's  pains  and 
benefits  here  concern  her  daughter  and  baffle  the  lover, 
has  wandered  into  a  tragic  ballad,  "The  Mother's  Mali- 
son, or  Clyde  Water."  In  fact,  both  motives  appear.  The 
man's  mother  begs  him  not  to  tempt  his  fate.  Like  the 
mother  of  Johnie  Cock,  who,  however,  spares  malison 
and  only  expresses  fears,  Willie's  mother  offers  him  in 
incremental  stanzas,  with  corresponding  stanzas  for  his 
rejections,  the  best  bed  in  the  house,  the  best  hen  on 
the  roost,  and  then,  since  he  will  not  bide,  the  curse  of 
drowning  in  Clyde.  His  appeal  to  the  river,  as  Mr.  Child 
points  out,  has  a  classical  parallel :  — 

"  '  O  spair  me,  Claid's  water, 
Spare  me  as  I  gaa  ! 
Make  me  yer  wrak  as  I  come  back. 
But  spare  me  as  I  gaa  !'  " 

The  girl  finds  him  drowned  in  the  stream,  and  says  that 

the  two  mothers  will  be  sorry:  — 

" '  For  we 's  bath  slipe  soun  in  Glide's  water.' " 


THE   FILIAL  RELATION  175 

To  match  the  close  relation  of  mother  and  son,  we  ffet 
a  ghmpse  of  the  daughter  who  can  dare  everything  for 
love  of  her  sire.  In  a  vigorous  old  ballad,*  which  has  a 
parallel  tradition  to  support  its  facts,  but  fails  to  maintain 
them  in  the  light  of  history,  Sir  John  Butler's  hall  is  laid 
about  and  taken  by  liis  "Uncle  Stanley"  and  other  merry 
men.  Ellen,  the  daughter,  comes  down  "laced  in  pall," 
faces  the  invaders,  and,  splendide  mendax,  declares  that 
her  father  is  abroad.  In  vain.  A  faithful  retainer  makes 
a  desperate  stand  at  Butler's  room :  — 

"  Ffaire  him  ffall,  litle  Holcroflt ! 
Soe  merrilye  he  kept  the  dore, 
Till  that  his  head  fFrom  his  shoulders 
Came  tumbling  down  upon  the  ffloore." 

Tangled  as  this  story  seems  to  be,  truth  lies  somewhere 
behind  it;  the  devoted  daughter  and  the  faithful  servant 
—  contemporary,  almost,  with  that  Paston  family  whose 
letters  tell  so  much  of  domestic  relations  in  the  fifteenth 
century  —  are  no  fable,  whatever  their  exact  date  and 
place. 

The  figure  of  the  stepmother  flits  very  dimly  across  the 
ballad.  She  gets  short  shrift  in  "The  Laily  Worm."  She 
appears  in  "Rose  the  Red  and  White  Lily,"  wicked  of 
course,  but  subordinate  and  baffled;  "Lady  Isabel,"  ^ 
however,  who  this  time  has  no  elf-knight,  but  a  lover 
beyond  the  sea  and  a  weak  father  at  home,  is  bidden  by 
her  angry  and  abusive  stepmother  to  drink  poisoned 
wine.    She  asks  first  to  go  to  Marykirk,  where  she  sees 

'  Sir  John  Butler,  no.  165,  from  the  Percy  MS.  '  No.  261. 


176  THE   BALLADS 

her  own  mother  sitting  in  a  golden  chair.    "  Shall  I  fly, 
mother, or  drink?" — "Drink,"  is  the  answer;  "your  bed 
is  made  in  a  better  place  than  ever  hers  will  be."    Isabel 
drinks  and  dies;  the  stepmother  goes  mad  "in  the  fields." 
Fickle  husbands  and  false  wives  play  no  great  part.  In 
the  group  of  comparatively  modern  ballads,  a  certain 
Earl  of  Aboyne,^  who  is  courteous  and  kind  to  every 
woman,  nevertheless  has  the  fault  that  "he  stays  ouer 
lang  in  London."   At  last  he  comes;   his  lady  marshals 
all  the  grooms,  minstrels,  cooks,  chambermaids,  a  stanza 
for  each  degree;  stately  she  steps  to  meet  him:    "Wel- 
come, thrice  welcome  from  London."    "Kiss  me,"  says 
the  earl  lightly;  "for  the  morn  should  hae  been  my  bonny 
wedding-day  had  I  stayed  the  night  in  London!"  —  "Go 
kiss  your  ladies  in  London!  "  answers  the  offended  wife. 
—  "An   unworthy  welcome,"  cries  he;  "men,  we'll  go 
back."    She   begs  to   be  taken  with   him,  but   in  vain; 
lives  a  scant  year,  and  dies  of   broken  heart.    The  earl 
absurdly  enough  puts  fifteen  lords  in  black,  and  weeps 
up  to  the  very  gates  of  Aboyne.    Another  wife,  the  Lady 
of  Leys,^  is  more  medieval  in  her  point  of  view;  when 
she  learns  of  the  baron's  escapade,  — 

"  That  the  laird  he  had  a  bairn, 
The  warst  word  she  said  to  that  was 
'I  wish  I  had  it  in  my  arms,'  " 

*  No.  235.  Version  J  removes  the  absurdities  by  making  Peggy  Ir- 
vine his  truelove,  to  whom  he  is  pledged,  and  not  his  wife.  In  no.  240, 
The  Rantin  Laddie,  an  Earl  of  Aboyne  fathers  the  bairn  of  a  sweet- 
heart and  brings  her  home  in  due  form. 

2  The  Baron  o  Leys,  no.  241. 


BALLADS  OF  JEALOUSY  177 

offering  to  sell  her  jointure-lands  and  so  release  her 
"rantin  laddie"  from  his  alternative  of  death  or  ten  thou- 
sand crowns.  A  foolish  husband  is  Earl  Crawford,^  whose 
ballad  is  based  on  facts  that  happened  in  the  sixteenth 
century  and  was  traditionally  recited  or  sung  late  in  the 
nineteenth.  Lady  Crawford,  a  trifle  jealous  of  her  lord's 
devotion  to  their  child,  jests  about  its  paternity;  and  the 
angry  man  sends  her  home.  She  dies  of  a  broken  heart 
just  as  Crawford  has  determined  to  take  her  back.  There 
is  no  death  in  the  ballad  of  "Jamie  Douglas,"  ^but  there  is 
a  very  sad  wife,  who  speaks  throughout  in  the  first  person, 
takes  into  the  ballad  some  stanzas  of  the  fine  song  of 
"  Waly,  Waly,"  and  blames  Lockwood,  a  retainer  of  the 
Marquis,  for  bringing  about  their  separation.  This  sepa- 
ration is  historical  fact,  and  took  place  in  1681.  Another 
DSuglas  ballad  exists  only  in  a  single  stanza:  — 

"The  Countesse  of  Douglas,  out  of  her  boure  she  came. 
And  loudly  there  that  she  did  call: 
It  is  for  the  Lord  of  Liddesdale 

That  I  let  all  these  teares  downe  fall,"  — 

but  this  more  serious  case  of  marital  troubles  seems  not 
to  be  true. 

With  the  actual  breach  of  marriage  vows,  balladry  has 
little  concern.  There  is  a  small  group  of  serious  ballads 
which  belong  here,  two  of  them  excellent;  and  these  are 
matched  by  a  single  but  successful  humorous  ballad  well 
known  in  many  lands.  "Our  Goodman"'  comes  unex- 
pectedly home  and  sees  a  horse  at  the  door. 

»  No.  229.  '  No.  204.  '  No.  274. 


178  THE  BALLADS 

'"What's  this  now,  good  wife, 
What's  this  I  see? 
How  came  this  horse  here 
Without  the  leave  o'  me?' 
'A  horse?'  quo  she.  —  'Ay,  a  horse,'  quo  he. 
'  Shame  fa'  your  cuckold  face, 

111  mat  ye  see  ! 
'T  is  naething  but  a  broad  sow 
My  minnie  sent  to  me.' 
'A  broad  sow?'  quo  he.  —  'Ay,  a  sow,'  quo  she. — 
'  Far  hae  I  ridden. 

And  farer  hae  I  gane. 
But  a  sadle  on  a  sow's  back 
I  never  saw  nane.'" 

All  the  rest  is  incremental  repetition  on  the  frame  of  these 

stanzas,  —  jack-boots    are    explained    as    water-stoups, 

sword  as  porridge-spurtle,  or  stirring-stick,  and  so  on  to 

a  climax  which  the  hearer  can  continue  as  he  pleases.   It 

has  been  noted  above  ^  that  this  ballad,  a  situation  full 

of  repetition  and  capable  of  unlimited  insertions,  is  sung 

in  several  parts  of  France  "as  a  little  drama."    In  rare 

cases,  it  has  a  serious  ending;    but  that  is  against  the 

spirit  of  the  piece,  and  we  need  not  be  alarmed  at  the 

threat :  — 

"  Je  t'y  menerai  z'en  Flandre 
Et  puis  t'y  ferai  pendre  ..." 

which  the  woman  parries  with  "Keep  that  terrible  fate 
for  French  robbers!"  ^ 

1  See  p.  103,  and  Child,  v,  90. 

^  Two  young  girls  "  play"  this  ballad,  one  made  up  as  angry  shepherd, 
the  other  as  timid  shepherdess,  singing  it  from  house  to  house,  accom- 
panied by  the  young  folk  of  the  village.  —  Puymaigre,  Chants  Popu- 
laires,  1865,  pp.  215  ff. 


BALLADS   OF   ADULTERY  179 

Serious  enough  are  the  other  Enghsh  ballads  which 
deal  with  this  theme.  "Child  Owlet"  and  the  "Queen 
of  Scotland,"  ^  one  tragic,  the  other  not,  are  negligible; 
but  "The  Bonny  Birdy,"  with  its  "admirably  effective  " 
refrain,  where  an  ill-treated  bird  reveals  to  a  husband  the 
treachery  of  his  wife,  and  two  ballads  from  the  Percy  Folio, 
"Old  Robin  of  Portingale  "  and  "Little  Musgrave  and 
Lady  Barnard,"  ^  deserve  the  highest  praise.  The  story, 
naturally  enough,  is  the  same  in  both  of  these  pieces,  but 
they  differ  in  details.  Old  Robin,  after  he  has  slain,  with 
surprising  agility  for  his  years,  not  only  Sir  Gyles  the 
lover,  but  four  and  twenty  of  Gyles's  "next  cousins," 
knights,  who  came  to  help  ding  the  husband  down,  and 
has  then  cruelly,  but  by  good  right,  mutilated  the  offend- 
ing bride,  is  seized  with  generous  remorse,  laments  in  con- 
ventional but  effective  stanzas  his  violence  to  a  woman 
and  his  slaughter  of  a  good  knight,  burns  the  cross  into 
his  own  flesh,  —  "shope  the  cross  in  his  right  sholder,  of 
the  white  flesh  and  the  red,"  —  and  fares  on  a  crusade. 

"  God  let  never  soe  old  a  man 
Marry  soe  yonge  a  wife  ..." 

is  the  opening  word  of  the  ballad,  which  reminds  one 
here  of  Heine's  " Es  war  ein  alter  Konig."  Lord  Barnard, 
however,  in  the  companion  piece,  is  not  said  to  be  old, 
and  his  lady  was  not  married  against  her  will;  she  is  pure 
wanton.  Barnard's  wild  ride  for  vengeance,  and  the  song 
of  warning  when  his  horn  blew,  —  "Away,  Musgrave, 
away ! "  —  half  heard  and  understood  by  the  lover,  un- 
'  Nos.  291,  301.  2  Nog   gg,  80,  81. 


180  THE  BALLADS 

heard  by  the  lady,  are  as  effective  as  may  be,  and  were 
popular  long  ago.  Percy  noted  the  quotations  from  this 
ballad  by  Beaumont  and  Fletcher.^  Passions  jostled  each 
other  rudely  in  the  old  time.  Barnard  rides  for  ven- 
geance, but  will  not  "kill  a  naked  man,"  and  of  his  two 
swords  gives  Musgrave  the  better ;  wounded  at  the  first 
stroke,  a  conventional  situation,  he  slays  his  man  at  the 
second.  Lady  Barnard  will  pray  for  Musgrave 's  soul,  she 
says  defiantly,  "  but  not  for  thee,  Barnard ! "  He  cuts  her 
cruelly  in  the  old  act  of  mutilation  for  adultery,  and  her 
heart's,  blood  runs  trickling  down.  Then,  as  with  Robin 
of  Portingale,  the  sudden  repentance :  — 

" '  Woe  worth  me,  woe  worth,  my  mery  men  all. 
You  were  neer  borne  for  my  good; 
Why  did  you  not  offer  to  stay  my  hand 
When  you  see  me  wox  so  wood  ?  ^ 

" '  For  I  have  slaine  the  bravest  sir  knight, 
That  euer  rode  on  steed; 
So  have  I  done  the  fairest  lady 
That  ever  did  woman's  deed.' "  ^ 

*  Knight  of  the  Burning  Pestle,  v,  3 ;    Bonduca,  v,  2 ;  Monsieur 
Thomas,  iv,  11. 
^  Wood  =  mad. 

^  B,  the  Percy  MS.  version,  has  the  better  reading :  — 
"  That  ever  wore  woman's  weed,"  — 
and  adds  an  interesting  line :  — 

"  So  have  I  done  a  heathen  child,"  — 

that  is,  an  unbaptized,  unchristened  child.  —  A  very  curious  marital 
complication,  not  the  sort,  one  would  think,  for  ballads  or  any  other 
literature,  is  recorded  in  the  Earl  of  Errol,  no.  231,  a  saucy,  dashing 
ballad  on  the  Earl's  part. 


CHILD    MAURICE  181 

It  will  be  noted  that  "Child  Maurice"  ends  somewhat 
in  this  way  and  with  such  an  imprecation.  But  "  Child 
Maurice"  is  not  a  simple  tale  of  lawless  love  and  revenge; 
like  "Babylon,"  it  belongs  to  the  tales  of  mistake  and 
traffic  "recognition."  The  wife  is  at  least  true  to  her 
vows;  the  supposed  lover  whom  she  was  to  meet  in  the 
Silver  Wood,  and  whose  message  was  overheard  by  the 
husband,  is  her  son;  and  the  swift,  unexpected  climax 
of  discovery  and  death  is  a  far  better  foil  for  these  words 
of  despair  from  the  husband.  He  has  tossed  Child 
Maurice's  head  to  her:  "lap  it  soft  and  kiss  it  oft, for  thou 
lovedst  him  better  than  me!"  And  she:  "I  never  had 
child  but  one,  and  you  have  slaine  him."  Not  only  is 
the  husband's  outburst  better  phrased:  — 

"  Sayes,  '  Wicked  be  my  merrymen  all, 
I  gave  raeate,  drinke,  and  clothe  ! 
But  cold  they  not  have  holden  me 
When  I  was  in  all  that  wrath  ! 

" '  For  I  have  slain  one  of  the  curtiousest  knights 
That  ever  bestrode  a  stede, 
So  have  I  done  one  of  the  fairest  ladyes 
That  ever  ware  woman's  weede,'  "  — 

but  it  is  thus  that  we  know  of  her  breaking  heart  and 
death.  No  wonder  that  Gray,  as  sensitive  a  critic,  as 
scholarly  a  poet,  as  ever  lived,  almost  lost  his  balance  over 
a  version  of  this  ballad,  and  wrote  in  words  that  cannot 
be  quoted  too  often:  "It  is  divine.  .  .  .  Aristotle's  best 
rules  are  observed  in  it  in  a  manner  which  shews  that  the 
author  never  had  heard  of  Aristotle.   It  begins  in  the  fifth 


182  THE  BALLADS 

act  of  the  play.  You  may  read  it  two-thirds  through  with- 
out guessing  what  it  is  about;  and  yet,  when  you  come  to 
the  end,  it  is  impossible  not  to  understand  the  whole 
story."  ^ 

Supernatural  complications  in  the  crime  against  wed- 
lock will  be  noted  in  "James  Harris,"  one  of  that  small 
group  of  ballads  which  deals  with  the  other  world. ^  True 
wives  and  leal  maidens  also  find  words  of  commendation. 
Brown  Adam,^  the  outlaw,  comes  back  from  greenwood 
to  find  his  wife  sturdily  but  despairingly  resisting  not  only 
a  gallant's  purse  of  gold,  but  a  drawn  sword ;  and  Brown 
Adam  has 

"...  gard  him  leave  his  bow,  his  bow. 

He  's  gard  him  leave  his  bran'; 

He 's  gard  him  leave  a  better  pledge, 

Four  fingers  o'  his  right  han'." 

A  poor  ballad,  "Redesdale  and  Wise  William,"  is  inter- 
esting not  only  for  the  "  Cymbeline  "  motive,  a  wager 
between  two  men  about  a  woman's  virtue,  but  because 
in  this  case  it  is  Wise  William's  sister,  not  his  wife,  whose 
chastity  is  put  to  proof.  Redesdale  loses  his  lands  and 
goes  over  sea.  Brother  and  sister,  it  would  seem,  are  an 
older  combination  for  these  instances  of  close  confidence 
and  affection  than  husband  and  wife  or  lover  and  sweet- 
heart;  and  it  has  been  suggested  *  that  the  various  tales 

>  Gray  to  Mason,  Works,  ed.  Gosse,  ii,  316.  The  "  play  "  is  Home's 
Douglas. 

^  See  below,  p.  216. 

3  No.  98. 

*  By  the  late  Gaston  Paris,  as  reported  by  one  of  his  students.  The 
present  writer  has  sketched  the  case  for  the  sister's  son  in  a  paper  of  that 


THE   SISTER'S   SON 

should  be  so  ordered  in  their  final  chronology.  The  bal- 
lads have  preserved  some  remarkable  traces  of  the  pre- 
cedence of  a  sister's  son  over  a  man's  own  son,  a  condition 
which  was  noted  by  Tacitus  among  the  ancient  Germans, 
and  is  the  subject  of  considerable  comment  by  ethnologists 
who  find  it  still  surviving  among  barbarous  nations 
and  savage  tribes.  There  is  no  English  ballad,  however, 
which  brings  out  this  whole  complex  of  relationship  so 
well  as  the  Danish  "Nilus  og  Hillelille,"  reminding  one 
not  only  of  the  scene  in  the  old  "  Waltharius,"  where  Hagen 
refuses  to  fight  his  brother-in-arms  until  the  latter  kills 
Hagen's  own  sister's  son,  but  also  of  the  vague  tradition 
that  on  the  Danish  throne  itself  it  was  the  custom  for  the 
king  to  be  succeeded  not  by  his  own  issue,  but  by  his 
sister's  son.  Sir  Nilus  marries  Hillelille  the  fair;  riding 
homeward  with  his  bridal  train,  which  includes  his  two 
sister's  sons,  they  are  overtaken  on  the  heath  by  wind  and 
rain  and  cold.  Nilus  would  take  shelter  with  his  bride's 
mother's  brother.  Sir  Peter,  but  there  is  feud  between 
them.  Nilus  has  killed  Sir  Peter's  brother.  "I  will  re- 
concile you,"  says  the  bride.  They  ride  to  Peter's  house; 
and  Peter  reproaches  his  niece  for  her  marriage.  He  had 
a  better  match  for  her;  moreover,  —  Sir  Nilus  knows 
whom  he  has  slain !  The  bride  goes  to  her  room;  the  men 
drink  mead  and  wine.  Peter  goes  out  and  brings  in  his 
brother's  sword,  throwing  it  down  on  the  table:  "You 
know  you  killed  him  .5^"    Nevertheless,  Nilus  shall  go  in 

title  in  An  English  Miscellany,  the  Furnivall  Memorial  Volume,  Oxford, 
1901. 


184  THE  BALLADS 

peace  and  all  his  men,  "save  only  thy  two  sister's  sons!" 
These  are  ready  to  fight.  Sir  Nilus  looks  on  and  at  last 
sees  them  felled  dead  to  the  earth.  In  spite  of  a  pious  vow, 
Nilus  draws  his  sword  and  plays  the  man,  getting  at  last 
a  mortal  wound.  "Come,  Hillelille;  it  is  time  to  ride!" 
They  ride  home;  his  sister  meets  him,  and  asks  for  her 
two  sons.  "Be  a  mother  to  my  wife,"  cries  the  dying 
man,  after  he  has  told  the  fate  of  his  dearest  kin.  But  the 
sister  cannot  do  that.  "How  can  I  be  fain  with  her  who 
has  made  me  lose  my  two  sons  and  my  brother  .5^"  Nilus 
dies  in  his  sister's  arms ;  and  the  bride  falls  dead  of  grief. 
The  grouping  of  relatives  here  is  extraordinarily  inter- 
esting; brother  and  sister,  the  sister's  sons,  the  mother's 
brother  —  such  are  the  nearest  and  dearest  of  kin.  No 
one  English  ballad  shows  this  concentration;  but  the 
cumulative  details  of  a  score  of  ballads  come  to  the  same 
thing.  The  substitution  of  wife  for  sister  is  evident,  along 
with  some  well-worn  details,  in  Buchan's  contribution 
from  the  north  of  Scotland,  "The  Twa  Knights."^ 

On  the  whole,  ballad  ideals  of  true  wifehood,  while 
including  loyalty  to  the  marriage  vows  in  a  narrower 
sense,  would  undoubtedly  make  it  cover  more  positive 
virtues.  We  may  remember  that  our  old  epic,  the  Beo- 
wulf, sets  up  two  lypes  of  womanhood,  or  of  queenhood, 
one  very  good  and  one  very  bad;  if  we  sought  for  a 
similar  pair  in  the  ballads,  we  could  find  the  good  wife 
and  mother  sharply  outlined  in  the  heroine  of  the  ballad 
of  "Captain  Car,"  an  English  version  of  which  is  practi- 

'  No.  268. 


CAPTAIN   CAR  185 

cally  contemporary  with  the  event  that  it  narrates,  —  the 
burning,  in  1571,  of  a  castle  not  far  from  Aberdeen,  along 
with  the  mistress  and  twenty-seven  inmates;  while  the 
more  shadowy  figure  of  the  bad  wife  is  revealed  in  the 
"Baron  of  Brackley."  ^  Even  those  fierce  times  could 
not  away  with  the  brutality  of  Car,  or,  as  some  versions 
have  it,  of  Adam  Gordon;  and  the  answer  of  the  Lady 
Hamilton,  who,  it  seems,  should  be  a  Forbes,  awoke  an 
admiring  response  in  the  ballad  world.  Leaning  on  her 
castle  wall,  she  sees  a  troop  coming,  and  thinks  it  to  be 
her  "wed  lord,"  but  it  turns  out  to  be  traitor  Captain  Car. 
"  Give  over  thy  house,  thou  lady  gay,"  he  bids;  and  adds 
insult  to  the  demand. 

" '  I  will  not  give  over  my  hous,'  she  saithe, 
*  Not  for  feare  of  my  lyffe  ; 
It  shall  be  talked  throughout  the  land,^ 
The  slaughter  of  a  wyffe.'  " 

She  fires  shots  that  miss   Car   but   kill  "other  three." 

Hard  pressed,  she  demands  safety  for  her  eldest  son;  the 

captain  bids  her  let  the  boy  down  in  a  sheet,  and  assures 

a  good  reception.    This  is  done;    he  cuts  out  the  child's 

tongue  and  heart,  and  casts  them  over  the  wall  to  the 

mother.    Owing  to  a  traitor  within  her  castle,  the  place  is 

now  fired. 

"  But  then  bespake  the  little  child, 
That  sate  on  the  nurses  knee; 
Saies,  'Mother  deere,  give  ore  this  house, 
For  the  smoke  it  smoothers  me.' 

>  Nos.  178,  203. 

'  See  similar  phrase  below,  p.  210,  from  a  widow. 


186  THE  BALLADS 

"  '  I  would  give  all  my  gold,  my  childe. 
So  would  I  doe  all  my  fee, 
For  one  blast  of  the  westerne  wind 
To  blow  the  smoke  from  thee.' "  ' 

But  there  is  no  thought  of  surrender  and  dishonor;  she 
dies  with  her  children;  and  she  was  indeed  "talked 
throughout  the  land,"  a  wife  such  as  wives  should  be. 
Types  are  generally  taken  from  folk  in  high  place.  A 
lowlier  but  vivid  ideal  of  wifehood  is  in  "Adam  Bell;" 
while  the  wife  of  Geordie,  who  saves  that  hero  from  the 
very  block,  by  offering  all  she  holds  dear,^  mills,  uncles, 
her  own  children,  is  at  least  of  gentle  blood.  But  in  the 
"Baron  of  Brackley,"  a  ballad  fairly  Homeric  for  simpli- 
city,^ for  the  effective  use  of  name  and  place,  and  more 
than  Homeric  in  its  intense  clannish  sentiment,  there  is 
another  kind  of  wife.  Barring  the  question  of  dates,  and 
the  probable  confusion  of  two  Brackleys,  one  killed  by  a 
Farquharson,  in  1666,  another — very  likely  the  husband 
of  our  heroine  —  in  1592,  there  is  no  doubt  of  the  type  and 
reputation  of  the  wife  as  portrayed  by  the  ballad.  Inverey 
with  his  caterans  comes  down  Deeside  "whistlin'  and 
playin',"  knocks  at  Brackley 's  gates,  and  demands  his 
blood.  The  baron  naturally  hesitates  to  go  out.  His  lady 
taunts  him  with  cowardice;  and  he  summons  his  fighting 
kin  for  a  hopeless  struggle. 

"  At  the  head  o  the  Etnach  the  battel  began, 
At  little  Auchoilyie  thei  killd  the  first  man. 

1  Text  of  the  Percy  MS. 

2  In  B,  no.  209. 

'  Professor  Child  is  surely  not  quite  just  to  its  qualities  in  bracketing 
it  with  The  Fire  of  Frendraught  (196)  as  "fairly  good." 


THE   BARON   OF   BRACKLEY  187 

"  First  they  killed  ane,  and  soon  they  killed  twa, 
Thei  killed  gallant  Brackley,  the  flour  o  them  a'. 

"  Thei  killd  William  Gordon  and  James  o  the  Knock,' 
And  brave  Alexander,  the  flour  o'  Glenmuick. 

"  What  sichin  and  moaning  was  heard  i  the  glen. 
For  the  Baronne  o  Braikley,  who  basely  was  slayn ! 

" '  Cam  ye  bi  the  castell,  and  was  ye  in  there  ? 
Saw  ye  pretty  Peggy  tearing  her  hair?' 

"  *  Yes,  I  cam  by  Braikley,  and  I  gaed  m  there. 
And  there  saw  his  ladie  braiding  her  hair. 

" '  She  was  rantin,  and  dancin,  and  singin  for  joy, 
And  vowin  that  nicht  she  would  feest  Inverey. 

" '  She  eat  wi  him,  drank  wi  him,  welcomd  him  in, 
Was  kind  to  the  man  that  had  slayn  her  baronne.' 

"Up  spake  the  son  on  the  nourice's  knee, 
'Gin  I  live  to  be  a  man,  revenged  I'll  be.' 

"Ther's  dool  i  the  kitchin  and  mirth  i  the  ha'. 
The  Baronne  o  Braikley  is  dead  and  awa'." 

Such  are  the  ballad's  typical  wives,  good  and  bad,^ 
drawn  by  the  hand  of  tradition  on  a  background  of  actual 
experience.  We  turn  again  to  the  tragedy  of  kin,  and 
those  ballads  which  derive  not  so  much  from  actual  per- 
sons and  events  as  from  the  general  store  of  human  pas- 
sions and  the  general  experience  of  fate.  "The  Cruel 
Brother,"  already  noted,  is  "one  of  the  most  popular  of 

»  Text:  "Knox." 

^  See,  also,  the  Three  Ravens,  and  Bonny  Bee  Horn,  below,  p.  198, 
for  constancy. 


188  THE  BALLADS 

Scottish  ballads,"  according  to  Aytoun  the  most  popular; 
it  holds  to  the  primitive  form  and  has  a  varying  stock  of 
refrains.  A  knight,  or  "gentleman,"  chooses  and  wins 
the  youngest  of  three  sisters:  — 

"  One  o'  them  was  clad  in  red: 
He  asked  if  she  wad  be  his  bride. 

"One  o'  them  was  clad  in  green: 
He  asked  if  she  wad  be  his  queen. 

"  The  last  o'  them  was  clad  in  white: 
He  asked  if  she  wad  be  his  heart's  delight." 

This  is  strongly  suggestive  of  the  old  partner  verses  in 
genuine  ballads  of  the  dance;  and  it  is  followed  by  similar 
repetitions  which  express  the  "asking-permission"  for- 
mula, also  choral  in  its  source.  Our  wooer  asks  all  the 
bride's  kin  for  consent,  forgetting  only  her  brother  John. 
The  tragedy  has  slipped  from  its  old  levels,  where  a 
brother  was  really  his  sister's  keeper  and  found  a  hus- 
band for  her  as  Sir  Peter  had  vainly  done  in  the  Danish 
ballad  cited  on  a  preceding  page;  here  is  mere  ferocity  of 
resentment  for  a  slight,  when,  on  the  wedding-day,  John 
sets  the  bride  upon  her  horse  for  the  ride  to  church,  and 
stabs  her  to  the  heart.  She  makes  the  usual  legacies,  in- 
teresting in  this  case  for  the  glimpse  of  a  bad  sister-in-law 
who  may  have  inspired  brother  John's  crime. 

"  O  what  will  you  leave  to  your  father  dear  ? 
'The  silver-shod  steed  that  brought  me  here.' 

"  What  will  you  leave  to  your  mother  dear  ? 
'My  velvet  pall  and  my  silken  gear.' 


BROTHER  AND   SISTER  189 

"  What  will  you  leave  to  your  sister  Anne  ? 
'My  silken  scarf  and  my  gowden  fan.' 

"  What  will  you  leave  to  your  sister  Grace  ? 
'My  bloody  cloaths  to  wash  and  dress.' 

"  What  will  you  leave  to  your  brother  John  ? 
'The  gallows-tree  to  hang  him  on.' 

"  What  will  you  leave  to  your  brother  John's  wife  ? 
'The  wilderness  to  end  her  life.'  " 

As  in  the  Danish  ballad  quoted  above,  brother  and  sister 
represent  a  relation  of  ancient  sanctity,  and  there  are 
traces  of  the  brother's  almost  paternal  position.  Another 
brother,  in  "Lady  Maisry,"  bids  his  sister  give  up  her 
lover  across  the  border, or  be  burned  alive;  seven  brothers 
avenge  a  like  stolen  love  in  "Clerk  Saunders;"  while  in 
a  far  poorer  piece.  Earl  Rothes  betrays  a  young  lad's 
sister,  and  the  boy  swears  that  when  he  is  grown  he  will 
thrust  his  sword  through  the  betrayer's  body.^  Not  only 
slighted  authority  is  in  play;  there  is  the  modern  motive 
of  rivalry.  Spread  over  the  British  Isles,  not  even  now 
quite  extinct  as  tradition,  and  popular  to  the  point  of 
parody,  "The  Twa  Sisters"  ^  is  a  good  match  for  "The 
Cruel  Brother,"  is  equally  primitive  in  form  and  as  rich 
in  the  old  repetition.  Best  known  in  the  version  of  the 
"Minstrelsy,"  with  a  refrain  "Binnorie,  O  Binnorie," 
this  ballad  is  palpably  compounded  of  the  dramatic 
"relative"  situation  with  epic  and  romantic  elements 
which  may  be  reduced  to  the  idea  that  a  dead  girl's  lover, 
or  else  a  great  harper,  strings  his  harp  with  three  locks 
»  See  nos.  65,  69,  297.  =>  No.  10. 


190  THE   BALLADS 

of  her  yellow  hair  with  strange  results  in  the  playing. 
The  younger  of  two  sisters,  chosen  as  usual  by  the 
wooing  knight,  who,  however,  has  also  courted  the  elder 
with  sundry  gifts,  is  pushed  into  the  water  by  her  rival 
and  is  drowned.  The  miller  finds  her  body  in  his  dam, 
and  wonders;  but  the  harper,  who  comes  by,  strings  his 
harp  with  her  hair  and  plays  to  the  king  at  dine: — 

"  The  first  tune  he  did  play  and  sing. 
Was,  '  Farewell  to  my  father,  the  king.' 

"  The  nextin  tune  that  he  playd  syne. 
Was,  '  Farewell  to  my  mother,  the  queen.' 

"The  lasten  tune  that  he  playd  then, 
Was  '  Wae  to  my  sister,  fair  '  Ellen.'  " 

Here  the  harp,  with  its  farewell,  represents  the  usual 
conclusion  in  a  series  of  legacies.  So,  in  the  ballad  noticed 
twice  before,  when  accident  or  jealousy  brings  two 
brothers  to  blows,  and  then,  with  fatal  conclusion,  to  for- 
giveness and  love,  the  affecting  messages  for  home  take 
the  place  of  the  legacy  formula.  More  complicated,  and 
of  course  without  this  legacy  conclusion,  is  the  rivalry  of 
two  brothers  in  the  best  versions  of  "Lord  Ingram  and 
Chiel  Wyat,"^  —  in  one  case  they  are  uncle  and  nephew, 
—  where  both  lay  their  hearts  on  one  lady.  Ingram  courts 
her  openly,  and  gets  consent  of  kin;  Wyat  has  secretly 
gained  her  love.  The  wedding  is  set;  she  sends  the  usual 
bonny  boy  with  a  message  to  Wyat;  and  immediately 
after  the  marriage  tells  her  unwelcome  husband  that  she 
»  C  reads  "false."  '  No.  66. 


THE   BRAES  O  YARROW  191 

had  warned  him  in  every  detail.  He  will  father  the  bairn, 
he  says;  she  refuses  with  contempt.  Then  up  starts  Chiel 
Wyat,  out  of  space  it  would  seem;  and  the  brothers  kill 
each  other.    Lady  Maisry  goes  mad. 

Still  another  form  of  brotherly  vengeance,  like  Ham- 
let's, spares  the  woman  and  seeks  out  the  man.  A  brother 
could  love  well  as  Wise  William  did,  and  he  could  hate 
well,  —  if  not,  as  just  now,  the  sister,  then  the  sister's 
spouse.  Here  is  another  brother  John,  who  harbors  nobler 
ideas  of  vengeance  for  a  sister's  ill-placed  love. 

" '  O  true-love  mine,'  stay  still  and  dine. 
As  ye  ha'  done  before,  O  ! ' 
'O  I'll  be  hame  by  hours  nine. 
And  frae  the  braes  of  Yarrow.' 

" '  O  are  ye  going  to  hawke,'  she  says, 
'  As  ye  ha  done  before,  O  ? 
Or  are  ye  going  to  weild  your  brand 
Upon  the  braes  of  Yarrow  ? ' 

" '  O  I  am  not  going  to  hawke,'  he  says, 
'As  I  have  done  before,  O. 
But  for  to  meet  your  brother  Jhon 
Upon  the  braes  of  Yarrow.' " 

An  unequal  fight,  a  blow  from  men  at  his  back,  and  the 
lover  or  husband  is  "sleeping  sound  on  Yarrow,"  whither 
the  lady  goes  to  find  him,  and  to  die.  Landscape  and  bal- 
lad hold  together;  it  is  superfluous  to  dwell  on  the  charm 
of  these  haunting  lines,  which,  in  nearly  all  versions,  keep 

'  The  Braes  o  Yarrow,  no.  214,  A.  In  all  versions  "  the  family  of  the 
woman  are  at  variance  with  the  man."  In  group  A-I  hero  and  heroine 
are  married;   in  J-P  lovers  (Child). 


192  THE  BALLADS 

the  melodious  name  of  the  river  sounding  from  verse  to 
verse,  and  are  echoed  by  the  masters  of  EngHsh  poetry.^ 
A  tragic  compHcation  of  kinship  which  hterature  is 
wont  to  avoid,  but  which  was  not  unknown  in  wilder 
times,  is  the  lawless  love  of  brother  and  sister.  The  mere 
possibility  of  it  gives  superfluous  horror  to  the  tragedy  of 
"Babylon."  In  "Sheath  and  Knife,"  in  "Lizie  Wan,"  ^ 
the  relation  is  known  and  nakedly  horrible;  in  "The 
Bonny  Hind"  and  "The  King's  Dochter  Lady  Jean,"  ^ 
it  is  ignorance  on  the  man's  part  and  ignorance  as  well 
as  helplessness  on  the  woman's  part.  Despite  their  sub- 
ject, all  these  ballads  are  of  the  old  and  sincere  kind, 
particularly  "Sheath  and  Knife."  Mother  and  child  die 
in  the  forest;  Willie  comes  back  forlorn  to  his  father's 
court,  where  are  minstrels  and  music  and  dancing:  — 

*' '  O  Willie,  O  Willie,  what  makes  thee  in  pain  ? ' 
{The  brume  blooms  bonnie  and  says  it  is  fair.) 
'1  have  lost  a  sheath  and  knife  that  I'll  never  see  again.' 
{And  we  7/  never  gang  doun  to  the  broom  onie  mair.)" 

Lizie  Wan  confesses  to  her  father  and  is  killed  by  the 
brother,  Geordie ;  in  remorse  he  tells  his  mother  what  he 
has  done,  and  will  sail  in  a  bottomless  boat,  coming  back 

'  No.  215,  Rare  Willie  Drowned  in  Yarrou;  pretty  enough,  but  little 
more  than  a  lament  of  a  girl  for  her  lover,  with  no  story,  has  more  details 
when  transferred   in   other  versions  from  Yarrow  to  the  "waters  of  I 
Gamry." 

^  Nos.  16,  51.  The  assumption  that  51,  Lizie  Wan,  and  52,  The 
King's  Dochter,  are  the  same  ballad,  asserted  positively  by  Mr.  Hender- 
son in  his  edition  of  the  Minstrelsy,  iii,  376,  seems  unnecessary  in  view 
of  this  vital  difference  between  ignorance  and  knowledge. 

3  Nos.  50,  52. 


THE   FALSE   SERVANT  193 

when  "the  sun  and  the  moon  shall  dance  on  the  green." 
In  "The  Bonny  Hind,"  Lord  Randal's  daughter  asks  her 
sudden  lover  who  he  is;  he  is  Jock  Randal,  come  o'er  the 
sea;  and  she  kills  herself  at  once.  Lady  Jean,  king's 
daughter,  has  the  same  experience,  the  same  fate,  —  but 
this  ballad,  while  traditional,  is  not  well  told.^ 

Complications  of  the  family  might  also  follow  the 
treachery  of  a  servant.  Most  audacious,  and  most  tragic 
in  its  results,  is  the  faithlessness  of  the  churl  servant  in 
"Glasgerion,"^  or,  as  the  Scottish  traditional  version  has 
it,  "Glenkindie."  The  hero,  who  may  be,  along  with 
Chaucer's  Glascurion,  a  historical  Welsh  bard,  is  the 
harper  who  can  harp  ladies  mad;  and  a  king's  daughter 
bids  him  to  her  bower.  He  tells  his  boy,  Jacke,  who  pro- 
mises to  waken  him  in  time  for  the  tryst;  but  the  servant 
forestalls  his  master.  "  Have  you  left  bracelet  or  glove  ?" 
asks  the  lady,  when  Glasgerion  arrives.  He  swears  by 
oak  and  ash  and  thorn,  a  fine  old  heathen  oath,  he  had 
never  been  in  her  chamber.  "  No  churl's  blood  shall 
spring  in  me,"  she  says,  and  draws  her  knife.    Glasgerion 

^  Leesome  Brand,  no.  15,  should  be  named  in  connection  with  births 
in  the  forest.  Tristram,  however,  or  the  false  Robin  Hood,  is  less  likely 
to  result  than  the  babe  or  babes  that  are  slain  either  purposely  or  by 
neglect.  The  frankness  of  the  ballads  about  this  matter  is  only  matched 
by  their  convention  of  necessary  absence  on  the  part  of  the  man,  even 
if  death  be  caused  by  his  absence  when  no  one  else  can  help.  Note  also  a 
remarkable  ballad,  which  tells  of  a  maid  who  marries,  full  of  foreboding, 
after  five  of  her  six  sisters  have  died  in  childbirth.  Her  own  fears  come 
true.  See  Fair  Mary  of  Wallington,  no.  91.  There  is  a  corresponding 
Breton  ballad. 

2  No.  67.  from  the  Percy  MS. 


194  THE  BALLADS 

goes  home  a  woe  man.  "  Come  hither,  thou  Jacke,  my 
boy;  if  I  had  killed  a  man  to-night,  I  would  tell  thee; 
but  if  I  have  not  killed  a  man  to-night,  Jacke,  thou  hast 
killed  three!" 

Not  so  poignant,  so  swift  and  grim,  are  the  other  bal- 
lads of  trust  betrayed  by  servants.  In  "Captain  Car"  we 
saw  that  a  steward,  or  the  like,  betrayed  his  lady  and  "kin- 
dled in  the  fire."  Also  subordinate  to  the  main  story  is 
the  treachery  of  the  nurse  in  "Lamkin,"  ^  where  the  lady 
of  the  house  and  her  child  are  likewise  done  to  death,  but 
here  by  one  man,  the  mason,  who  has  built  the  castle,  has 
had  no  pay  for  it,  and  in  the  lord's  absence  takes  fiendish 
revenge.  An  old  Kentish  version  of  this  ballad,  which  is 
mainly  from  Scotland,  and  very  widespread  there,  ends 
in  a  cumulative  relative-list  ^  which  can  be  indefinitely 
drawn  out:  Lady  Betty  is  bidden  to  come  down  and  see 
her  mother's  heart's  blood  run;  down  she  comes  and  begs 
to  die  for  her  mother;  but  again  the  call  sounds,  this  time 
for  Lady  Nelly  to  come  and  see  her  sister's  blood,  then 
Lady  Jenny,  and  so  on.  The  Scottish  versions,  however, 
simply  make  the  nurse,  a  false  limmer,  let  Lamkin  in  at 
a  little  shot-window  while  men  and  women  of  the  castle 
are  away.  Lamkin  kills  the  baby,  and  so  brings  down  its 
mother,  who  is  killed  despite  her  appeal  for  mercy.  The 
rhythm  of  most  of  the  versions  —  Child  prints  twenty- 
six  —  is  peculiar:  — 

"  '  O  still  my  bairn,  nourice, 
O  still  him  wi'  the  wand  ! ' 

'  No.  93.  '  See  p.  103.  above. 


LAMKIN  195 

'  He  winna  still,  lady, 

For  a'  his  father's  land.' 
'O  still  my  bairn,  nourice, 

O  still  him  wi'  the  bell!" 
'He  winna  still,  lady. 

Till  ye  come  down  yoursel.'  "  ^ 

More  epic  than  "Lamkin,"  which  is  of  the  older  "situa- 
tion" type  of  ballad,  is  "Fause  Foodrage;"  ^  here  the 
faithless  retainer  slays  his  king,  but  lets  the  queen  live 
till  she  bears  her  child.  If  it  prove  a  lass,  it  shall  be  well 
nursed;  a  lad-bairn  must  die  at  once.  The  queen,' 
escaping  from  her  guards,  bears  a  boy;  but  exchanges  it 
with  the  baby  girl  of  Wise  William  and  wife.  When  he 
grows  up,  the  lad  kills  the  usurper  and  marries  Wise 
William's  lass.  The  style  is  not  good;  king  and  queen 
need  not  be  taken  seriously.  In  "Sir  Aldingar,"^  how- 
ever, already  mentioned  as  the  probable  theme  in  one 
of  William  of  Malmesbury's  anecdotes,  we  have  an  old 
widespread  tale,  with  trial  by  combat,  and  with  variations 
of  incident  which  can  be  traced  to  the  stores  of  romance. 

*  The  nursery,  where  this  ballad,  so  full  of  repetition  and  so  insistent 
in  tune,  was  most  at  home,  varied  Lamkin's  name.  One  Northumber- 
land nurse  sang:  — 

"  Said  my  lord  to  his  ladye, 

As  he  mounted  his  horse  (bis) 
Take  care  of  Long  Lankyn 

That  lies  in  the  moss,  (bis) 
Said  my  lord  to  his  ladye, 

As  he  rode  away, 
Take  care  of  Long  Lankyn 
Who  lies  in  the  clay." 

He  was  Longkyn,  Lammikin,  Balcanqual,  and  so  on. 
^  No.  89. 
^  No.  59.     See  above,  p.  53, 


196  THE   BALLADS 

It  is  told  in  the  straightforward  ballad  way,  and  is  at  the 

other  extreme  from  the  story  by  allusion  and  suggestion, 

—  say    "Count    Gismond,"    where    Browning    gives    a 

glimpse  of  the  same  material.  Sir  Aldingar,  false  steward, 

would  have  seduced  our  comely  queen;    but  "our  queen 

she  was  a  good  woman,  and  evermore  said  him  nay." 

He  puts  a  leper  into  the  queen's  bed;    "a  loathsome 

cripple, "  says  Harry  King, "  for  our  dame  Queen  Elinor." 

Accused,  she  remembers  her  dream;    a  griffin  has  stript 

her  of  crown  and  kirtle,  and  would  have  borne  her  away 

to  its  nest,  but  for  "a  little  hawk  flying  out  of  the  east," 

which  strikes  down  the  griflfin.    Forty  days  are  given  the 

queen  to  find  a  champion,  else  she  is  to  be  burned.    A 

messenger  rides  south,  in  vain;    the  second,  riding  far 

east,  speeds  better,  finding  "a  little  child,"  who  sends 

word  to  the  queen  that  when  bale  is  highest  boot  is  nighest, 

and  that  her  dream  —  repeated  in  detail  —  will  come 

true.    It  does;    and  Aldingar,  mortally  wounded  by  the 

child,  confesses  all:   "thy  wife,  King  Harry,  — 

"  Thy  wiffe  she  is  as  true  to  thee 

As  stone  that  lies  on  the  castle  wall." 

The  "lazar,"  made  whole,  is  steward  in  Aldingar's  stead. 
This  is  from  the  Percy  Folio.  Another  version,  "Sir  Hugh 
le  Blond,"  with  a  steward  called  Rodingham,  comes  from 
the  recitation  of  an  old  woman  in  Scotland.  A  poor 
ballad,  "James  Hatley,"  ^  makes  Sir  Fenwick,  aged 
thirty-three,  steal  the  king's  jewels  and  lay  the  blame  on 
Hatley,  who  is  but  fifteen.  The  youth  gives  Fenwick  three 

1  No.  244. 


THE   FALSE  STEWARD  197 


wounds,  forces  confession,  and  marries  the  king's  daugh- 
ter, who  has  got  for  him  this  favor  of  trial  by  battle.  An 
ambitious  false  steward  to  the  Lord  of  Lorn'  is  sent  with 
his  master's  only  son,  a  youth  of  prodigious  learning,  on 
the  grand  tour,  beginning  with  France,  and  undertakes  to 
drown  the  heir;  he  has  a  kind  of  mercy  on  the  boy,  how- 
ever, strips  him  of  his  finery,  clothes  him  in  leather,  and 
makes  him  take  another  name  and  tend  sheep.  The 
recognition  comes,  after  tedious  stanzas,  at  the  French 
court ;  the  ballad  derives  very  superfluously  from  a  ro- 
mance. There  are,  of  course,  other  ballad  persons  who 
betray  their  trust  of  service  or  hospitality;  and  for  the 
most  part  they  get  a  good  curse  for  their  pains.  That  old 
palmer  who  tells  the  foresters  of  Johnie  Cock,  old  Carl 
Hood  in  "Earl  Brand,"  the  old  wife  in  "Adam  Bell," 
and  the  imitated  "Auld  Matrons"  in  her  own  ballad, ^  — 
it  is  not  clear  why  all  informers  should  be  old, — match 
the  "great-headed  monk"  who  betrays  Robin  Hood  to 
the  sheriff  of  Nottingham. 

The  truelove  also  can  be  false  or  fickle,  —  and  still  a 
truelove;  the  adjective  having  lost  in  most  cases  its  quali- 
fying force.  True  love  at  its  best,  stronger  than  death, 
is  beautifully  sung  in  the  ballad  of  "The  Three  Ravens,"^ 
which  is  unfortunately  not  so  well  known  as  its  cynical 
pendant,  "The  Twa  Corbies."  Instead  of  hawk  and 
hound  and  lady  fair,  all  false  to  the  new-slain  knight,  — 

"  Down  in  yonder  greene  field 
There  lies  a  knight  slain  under  his  shield. 

1  No.  271,  from  Percy  MS.  ^  jsj^  ^49.  '  No.  26. 


198  THE   BALLADS 

"His  hounds  they  lie  downe  at  his  feete, 
So  well  they  can  their  master  keepe. 

"  His  haukes  they  flie  so  eagerly 
There's  no  fowle  dare  him  come  nie." 

His  love  comes,  kisses  his  wounds,  and  carries  him  to  the 

shroud : — 

"  She  buried  him  before  the  prime, 
She  was  dead  herself  ere  even-song  time."  ^ 

Another  true  truelove  is  the  lady  of  "Bonny  Bee  Horn," 
whose  fidelity  is  better  brought  out  by  the  widow's  song  ^ 
which  the  ballad  partly  repeats: — 

"  There  shall  neither  coif  come  on  my  head,  nor  comb  come  in  my  hair; 
There  shall  neither  coal  nor  candle-light  come  in  my  bower  mair; 
Nor  will  I  love  another  one  until  the  day  I  die, 
For  I  never  lov'd  a  love  but  one,  and  he's  drowned  in  the  sea." 

The  lover  was  not  expected  to  show  such  devotion 
after  his  sweetheart's  death,  nor  was  he  always  a  model 
of  constancy  before;  but  in  this  case  he  could  often  look 
for  swift  revenge.  Young  Hunting  and  Clerk  Colvill,  in 
their  fine  ballads,^  desert  first  loves  at  the  cost  of  life 
itself.  The  clerk  belongs  with  the  supernatural  class; 
but  Young  Hunting  gets  his  death  at  a  mortal  woman's 
hands.    *'  Rock  your  young  son  never  an  hour  longer  for 

1  That  thief  in  Heine's  poem  is  the  real  counterpart  to  our  knight: 

"  Hanged  he  was  at  six  in  the  morning,  and  buried  by  seven; "   but  the 

sweetheart,  tender  and  true,  — 

"  Sie  aber,  schon  um  Achte, 
Trank  rothen  Wein,  unci  lachte! " 

'  Lowlands  of  Holland,  see  no.  92,  and  Child's  note.  —  The  Widow 
of  Ephesus  is  too  cynical  for  traditional  ballads. 
3  Nos.  68  and  42;   see,  also,  86  and  12. 


TRUELOVES  AND    OTHERS  199 

me,"  *  he  says,  in  no  gentle  fashion;  "I  have  found  an- 
other love,  and  the  very  soles  of  her  feet  are  whiter  than 
thy  face."  She  coaxes  him  to  bide  a  while,  plies  him  with 
the  good  ale  and  the  beer,  plies  him  with  the  good  ale 
and  the  wine,  and  stabs  him  with  the  inevitable  "little 
penknife."  A  bird  bids  her  keep  her  clothes  from  the 
blood;  reminded  of  the  witness,  she  tries  to  lure  the 
bird  and  kill  it,  but  in  vain.  She  boots  and  spurs  Young 
Hunting,  and  throws  him  into  the  wan  water  of  Clyde, 
"a green  turf  upon  his  breast"  to  hold  him  down.  The 
king  misses  his  son;  the  lady  swears  incrementally,  "by 
the  corn,"  that  she  has  not  seen  him  since  yesterday 
morning,  and  "  by  the  moon  "  that  yesterday  noon  was  her 
last  sight  of  him.  Probably  he  was  drowned  in  Clyde. 
Divers  dive  for  him  to  no  purpose;  but  the  bird  comes  in 
now,  tells  how  to  find  the  body  by  the  candle  test,  and 
reveals  the  murder.  Desperate,  the  lady  accuses  another 
woman;  but  the  trial  by  fire  clears  May  Catheren  and 
burns  the  guilty  one  to  death.  The  tables  are  turned  in 
"Young  Benjie,"  who  is  told  by  his  Marjorie  that  she 
would  choose  another  love.  He  persuades  her  to  walk 
with  him  by  wan  moonlight,  and  throws  her  into  the  linn. 
During  the  lykewake  the  dead  woman  tells  her  brothers 
of  the  murder,  and  prescribes  Young  Benjie's  punish- 
ment. Spare  his  life,  but  blind  him;  "and  ay,  at  every 
seven  year's  end,  ye'Jl  take  him  to  the  linn  for  penance." 
Jellon   Grame,^  for  no  apparent  reason,  —  in  another 

'  Brutal  betrayal  and  desertion,  unrelieved  by  romance,  is  very  rare; 
see  Trooper  and  Maid,  a  late  and  negligible  ballad,  no.  299. 
^  No.  90. 


200  THE   BALLADS 

version  he  is  called  Hind  Henry,  and  is  jealous  of  Brown 
Robin,  —  slays  his  sweetheart  in  the  mysterious  Silver 
Wood,  but  spares  the  child  she  bears  him,  bringing  it  up 
as  his  "sister's  son."    On  a  day,  Jellon  Grame  somewhat 
absurdly   confesses,   and    the    boy   kills    him.      Young 
Johnstone  stabs  his    bride,  and  repents  too    late;    his 
motive  is  not  clear.    Two  Scottish  ballads,  "The  Duke 
of  Athole's  Nurse"  and  "Sir  James  the  Rose,"i  tell  of 
revenge  hy  a  slighted  leman.     The  beautiful  ballad  of 
"Lord  Randal"  does  not  say  what  motive  the  sweetheart 
had  to  poison  him;  she  may  have  feared  desertion,  or  she 
may  have  tired  of  him.    The  fickle  lover  certainly  plays 
his  part   in   three  fine   ballads,   "Lord   Lovel,"   "Lord 
Thomas  and  Fair  Annet,"  "Fair  Margaret  and  Sweet 
William,"    ^  —  the  latter  being  provided  with  that  rare 
character  of  English  balladry,  a  ghost,  —  and  in  some 
indifferent  local   ballads,  like   "The  Coble  of  Cargill," 
"Burd  Isabel  and  Earl  Patrick,"  "Lord  Thomas  and 
Lady  Margaret,"  ^  where  the  injured  woman  respectively 
"bores"  her  love's  boat  and  sinks  him  on  his  visit  to  an- 
other mistress,  puts  a  curse  and  death  on  him,  and  poisons 
him,  a  vagrant  and  wretched  outcast,  at  her  door.   "Lord 
Lovel"  every  one  knows;  ^  every  one  should  know  how 
Lord  Thomas  quarrels  with  Fair  Annet,  and,  by  advice 
of  mother  and  l^other,  marries  the  nut-brown  bride  with 

»  Nos.  212,  213. 
'  Nos.  75,  73,  74. 
3  Nos.  242,  257,  260. 

*  For  the  rose  and  briar  which  grow  from  the  tombs  of  the  lovers  and 
unite  in  a  true-lover's  knot,  see  Child,  i,  96. 


FICKLE   LOVERS  201 

her  gold  and  gear,  and  how  at  church  the  jealous  bride 

stabs  the  old  love,  and  Lord  Thomas  then  kills  the  bride 

and  himself.    A  stanza  of  "Fair  Margaret  and  Sweet 

William,"  where  Margaret's  "grimly  ghost"  comes  into 

the  bridal  chamber,  is  quoted  in   "The  Knight  of  the 

Burning  Pestle,"  as  well  as  William's  word:  — 

" '  You  are  no  love  for  me,  Margaret, 
I  am  no  love  for  you.'  " 

"Bonny  Barbara  Allan"  is  double  fickleness,  tragic 
where  Robert  Henryson's  old  pastoral  of  "Robyn  and 
Makyn"  and  Burns's  "Duncan  Gray"  take  a  lighter 
view  of  the  same  situation.  "Lady  Alice"  is  a  pretty 
little  echo  of  Barbara,  and  still,  says  Mr.  Child,  "in 
the  regular  stock  of  the  stalls."  "The  Brown  Girl," 
printed  near  the  end  of  the  collection,^  while  not  an  old 
or  traditional  ballad,  is  a  lively  summing-up  of  the  whole 
case  for  this  rejected  brunette.  Brown  as  brown  can  be, 
her  eyes  black  as  sloe,  she  is  cast  off  by  a  fastidious  love 
simply  because  she  is  "so  brown."  In  half  a  year  he  is 
love-sick  indeed,  sends  first  for  "the  doctor-man"  and 
then  for  the  brown  girl  "  who  once  his  wife  should  be." 
Come  to  his  bedside,  she  can  scarce  stand  for  laughing, 
but  strokes  him  back  his  troth, ^  and  promises  "to  dance 
and  sing"  —  not  weep  —  on  his  grave  "a  whole  twelve- 
month and  a  day." 

In  another  group  of  ballads,  most  of  them  purely  tradi- 
tional, it  is  not  fickle  or  false  lover,  not  quarrel,  not  the 

»  No.  295. 

'  Taken  from  Sweet  William'' s  Ghost,  no.  77;  so  the  next  from  The 
Unquiet  Grave,  no.  78. 


202  THE  BALLADS 

cooling  of  affection,  but  the  hand  of  fate,  that  brings 
dule  and  sorrow  out  of  stolen  love.  "The  Bent  Sae 
Brown"  *  ends  well,  but  should  not  do  so.  "Fair  Janet," 
however,  "Lady  Maisry,"  "Clerk  Saunders,"  "Willie 
and  Lady  Maisry,"  and  the  "Clerk's  Twa  Sons  "  ^  have 
tragedy  and  to  spare.  Janet  bears  her  babe;  but  Sweet 
Willie  has  hardly  carried  it  off  to  his  mother's  bower, 
when  her  father  comes  and  bids  her  dress  for  her  wedding 
to  an  auld  French  lord.  Janet  puts  on  the  scarlet  robes, 
and  rides  the  milk-white  steed  to  her  marriage;  but  will 
not  dance  with  her  auld  French  lord  after  dinner.  Sweet 
Willie  comes  along  to  dance  with  the  bride's  maidens. 
Then  Janet  speaks: — 

"'I've  seen  ither  days  wi'  you,  Willie, 
And  so  has  mony  mae, 
Ye  would  hae  danced  wi'  me  mysel. 
Let  a'  my  maidens  gae.' " 

But  thrice  she  turns  in  the  dance,  when  she  falls  at  Willie's 
feet  never  to  rise  again.  He  sends  home  the  key  of  his 
coffer: — 

" '  Gae  hame  and  tell  my  mother  dear 
My  horse  he  has  me  slain; 
Bid  her  be  kind  to  my  young  son, 
For  father  he  has  nane.'  " 

Lady  Maisry's  English  lover  is  far  away  when  she  refuses 
to  give  him  up,  and  her  brother  condemns  her  to  the  fire. 
The  effective  conclusion  has  been  quoted  already.^  When 
the  seven  brothers  surprise  Clerk  Saunders  and  May 
Margaret  asleep,  six  are  for  sparing  him.    "  Lovers  dear," 

»  No.  71.  '  Nos.  64,  65,  69,  70,  72.  »  Above,  p.  122. 


LOVE   AND   WOE  203 

says  one  in  excuse;  "this  many  a  year,"  says  the  second, 
and  "sin  to  part  them,"  the  third;  "or  to  kill  a  sleeping 
man,"  the  fourth;  "I'll  not  twin  them,"  cries  the  fifth, 
and  the  sixth  is  for  all  hands  going  softly  away.  But  the 
seventh  stands  by  his  grim  idea  of  duty  to  kin  and  name, 
and  runs  his  sword  through  the  lover.  Willie  and  Lady 
Maisry  are  in  the  same  plight,  but  the  deed  is  done  by 
her  father.  In  the  "Clerk's  Twa  Sons  of  Owsenford," 
two  youths,  abroad  for  learning,  die  in  Paris,  by  pro- 
cess of  law,  as  penalty  for  stolen  love;  their  father  tries 
in  vain  to  save  them,  and  comes  home  to  tell  his  dis- 
tracted wife  that  he  has  "put  them  to  deeper  lore." 

To  be  sure,  balladry  knows  that  stolen  love  is  sweet, 
and  romances  know  that  a  happy  ending  of  it  is  most 
desired.  A  far  and  faint  echo  of  the  old  daybreak  song  of 
Provence  may  be  heard  in  "The  Gray  Cock,"  * — a  mod- 
ern affair.  Careless  lovers  now  make  amends,  now  jest  off 
the  matter,  in  what  Mr.  Child  calls  "pernicious"  ballads, 
however  popular,  like  "The  Broom  o'  Cowdenknowes " 
and  "The  Wylie  Wife  of  the  Hie  Toun  Hie."  ^  Better 
is  "The  Knight  and  Shepherd's  Daughter,"  suggestive 
of  the  Wife  of  Bath's  tale. 

One  of  the  pearls  of  English  balladry,  by  judgment  of 
such  lovers  of  the  ballad  as  Child  and  Grundtvig,  belongs 
to  a  little  group  where  a  peremptory  and  half -heartless,  if 
free-handed,  lover  puts  his  devoted  sweetheart  to  a  series 
of  ignoble  tests  in  order  to  get  rid  of  her.  True,  in  a  dra- 
matic poem  like  "The  Nut-Brown  Maid,"  these  tests  are 

»  No.  248.  2  Nos.  217,  290.     See,  also,  no.  110. 


204  THE  BALLADS 

hypothetical  and  meant  only  to  try  feminine  love  and 
devotion  to  the  uttermost ;  and  in  the  Patient  Griselda 
stories,  actual  trials  lead  to  the  same  triumph  of  woman's 
constancy.  It  has  been  suggested  that  the  man  in  this  lat- 
ter case  is  under  a  spell,  and  can  be  released  only  by  the 
almost  supernatural  endurance  of  his  wife.  In  "Child 
Waters,"  however,  the  tests  are  real  enough,  and  the  mo- 
tive is  surely  what  it  seems  to  be,  —  the  wish  of  a  wealthy 
and  careless  lover  to  rid  himself  of  an  encumbrance. 
Something  else  may  shimmer  in  the  epic  background; 
but  in  the  ballad  there  are  simply  a  loving  and  long- 
suffering  woman,  a  man  harsh  to  the  verge  of  brutality, 
and  circumstances  which  in  their  climax  of  trial  make 
the  ballad's  closest  friends  cry  out  with  pain.^  The  best 
version  makes  the  hero  send  poor  Ellen  to  the  town  to  fetch, 
and  actually  to  carry,  a  woman  for  his  pleasure;  in  "The 
Nut-Brown  Maid"  an  equally  revolting  rivalry  is  pro- 
posed; in  an  understudy  in  low  life  of  "The  Nut-Brown 
Maid  "  (called  "A  Jigge,"  Percy  Folio,  ii,  334)  Margaret 
proffers  a  hke  service  to  her  soldier.  How  and  where,  then, 
is  one  to  find  characteristics  which  so  far  outweigh  these 
defects  as  to  gain  from  the  two  great  masters  of  balladry 
unqualified  praise.?  "Child  Waters"  "has  perhaps  no 
superior  in  English,  and  if  not  in  English,  perhaps  no- 
where." ^     Grundtvig  gives  a  reason.     In  no  ballads  is 

*  It  has  been  noted  that  the  Erec  of  Chrestien  de  Troyes  shows  a 
much  more  consistent  and  likely  type  of  woman's  constancy.  But  the 
ordinary  medieval  reader  and  hearer  liked  a  stronger  dose  of  endurance; 
and  Chaucer's  Griselda  falls  into  line  with  the  main  procession. 

^  Child,  ii,  84. 


CHILD  WATERS  205 

there  such  richness  of  feeling,  of  lyric  expression,  as  in 
the  English;  and  "Child  Waters,"  he  says,  shows  this 
supreme  quality  in  all  its  versions.  We  have  already 
quoted  exquisite  stanzas  from  its  opening;  but  there  is 
even  finer  and  nobler  matter  left.  Other  ballads  tell  a 
story  of  women  who  follow  an  unwilling  lover  and  force 
his  hard  heart  to  take  pity  on  them.  Not  to  speak  of  con- 
tinental ballads,  with  which  we  have  here  no  concern, 
"Prince  Heathen,"  ^  fragment  as  it  is,  points  that  way, 
although  in  very  corrupted  shape.  In  "The  Pause  Lover 
Won  Back,"  ^  a  maid,  sitting  in  her  bower-door,  sees 
Young  John  hurry  by.  "You  seem  bent  on  a  long  jour- 
ney," she  says;  "Whither  away.?"  With  "a  surly  look" 
he  tells  her  that  is  not  her  concern:  "I'm  ga'en  to  seek  a 
maid  far  fairer  than  ye."  After  an  interpolated  stanza  or 
so,  she  kilts  up  her  fine  clothing  and  goes  after  him.  Then 
the  choral  stanza  comes  in  by  way  of  answer  to  his  com- 
mand that  she  turn  back,  and  continues  in  alternation 
with  some  helpless  but  progressive  incremental  verse: — 

"  'But  again,  dear  love,  and  again,  dear  love. 
Will  ye  never  love  me  again  ? 
Alas  for  loving  you  sae  well. 
And  you  nae  me  again  !  ' 

"The  first  an  town  that  they  came  till. 
He  bought  her  brooch  and  ring; 
And  aye  he  bade  her  turn  again 
And  gang  nae  furder  wi  him." 

Seeing  the  effect  of  her  stanza,  she  very  properly  repeats  it 

and  gets  this  time  at  the  next  town  "muff  and  gloves," 

*  No.  104.  2  ]sjo_  218. 


206  THE  BALLADS 

while  he  again,  but  more  feebly,  bids  her  go  back  "and 
choose  some  other  loves."  A  third  time  the  stanza,  and  at 
the  third  town  "his  heart  it  grew  more  fain,"  though  his 
agitation  permitted  of  no  purchases.  The  last  town,  pre- 
sumably, is  Berwick,  where  he  buys  her  a  wedding-gown 
and  makes  her  lady  of  halls  and  bowers.^  So  much  for  the 
vagrom  song.  Its  increments  and  repetitions  are  matched 
in  "  Child  Waters;"  but  all  hint  of  the  trivial  is  gone  from 
this  noble  ballad,  however  unsophisticated  the  style.  The 
unmeaning  increment,  even,  is  here,^  but  it  is  carried  by 
the  dignity  and  force  of  the  situation:  — 

"  There  were  four  and  twenty  ladyes, 
Were  playing  att  the  ball; 
And  Ellen,  was  the  ffairest  ladye, 
Must  bring  his  steed  to  the  stall. 

"  There  were  four  and  twenty  faire  ladyes 
Was  playing  at  the  chesse; 
And  Ellen,  she  was  the  ffairest  ladye, 
Must  bring  his  horse  to  grasse." 

And  exitus  acta  probat.  Nothing  could  be  more  dignified 
and  pathetic  than  the  close.  The  man's  mother,  here  again 
serviceable  and  yet  authoritative,  as  in  "Gil  Brenton," 
hears  Ellen  groaning  by  the  manger  side.  "  Rise  up,"  she 
says  to  her  son;  "I  think  thou  art  a  cursed  man,  for 
yonder  is  either  a  ghost  or  a  woman  in  her  pangs."  And 
Child  Waters  goes  to  the  stable  and  listens  to  Ellen,  who 
sings :  — 

^  Version  B,  from  a  woman's  recitation,  ends  more  prettily. 

*  As  well  as  the  tremendously  effective  increment :  see  above,  p.  133. 


CORONACHS  207 

"  LuIIabye,  my  owne  deere  child  ! 
Lullabye,  deere  child,  deere  ! 
I  wold  thy  father  were  a  king, 
Thy  mother  layd  on  a  beere  !  " 

The  "tests"  are  done,  if  one  will;  rather  it  is  the  callous 
hero  who  cannot  resist  this  final  appeal.  "  Peace,  good,  fair 
Ellen,"  he  says,  and  the  adjectives  are  a  kind  of  apology; 
"  bridal  and  churching  shall  be  on  one  day."  * 

III.  THE  CORONACH  AND  BALLADS  OF  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

Ballads  of  superstition,  as  modern  arrogance  chooses 
to  call  them,  are  as  rare  in  English  as  they  are  abundant 
in  Scandinavian  collections.  Nevertheless,  the  quality  of 
the  English  and  Scottish  versions  in  this  class  is  often 
supremely  good.  The  dead  man  was  mourned  in  song ; 
his  fate  was  followed  into  the  other  world;  and  when  he 
returned  to  visit  the  glimpses  of  our  moon,  he  rarely 
failed  to  be  impressive.  Originally,  he  was  doubtless 
mourned  by  solemn  dance  as  well  as  song,  and  the 
coronach  seems  to  point  to  such  origins,  however  ancient 
and  remote  we  are  fain  to  suppose  them  on  Scottish  and 
English  soil. 2  Unfortunately,  there  is  no  ballad  of  the 
parting  soul,  only  that  very  effective  "Lykewake  Dirge," 
which  Aubrey  reported  as  sung  at  rustic  funerals,  early  in 

1  Dr.  Furnivall  makes  no  allowance  for  the  Child,  and  reviles  his 
"cursedness"  utterly:  see  Hales  and  Furnivall,  Percy  Folio,  ii,  278. 

^  The  actual  dance  at  funerals  —  like  the  caracolu  of  Corsica,  noted 
above,  p.  95  —  seems,  however,  to  have  been  common  in  modern  Scot- 
land: see  Pennant's  Towr,  1774,  p.  99.  "The  nearest  of  kin,"  he  says, 
"  opens  a  melancholy  ball,  dancing  and  greeting"  —  weeping;  and  this 
goes  on  all  night.  Here  are  both  caracolu  and  vocero. 


208  THE  BALLADS 

the  seventeenth  century,  by  a  woman  Hke  a  praefica. 
"When  any  dieth,"  says  an  old  account  of  it,  "  certaine 
women  sing  a  song  to  the  dead  bodie,  recyting  the  journey 
that  the  partye  deceased  must  goe."  The  refrain,  or 
chorus,  is  very  insistent  and  plainly  of  popular  origin. 
But  this  is  not  a  ballad.  The  few  ballads  which  seem  to 
belong  to  the  coronach  order  "recite  the  journey"  which 
led  to  death,  but  not  the  way  beyond.  Every  one  knows 
the  pretty  verses  of  "Bessy  Bell  and  Mary  Gray."  "The 
Death  of  Queen  Jane,"  while  it  is  effective  enough,  echoes 
rather  the  gossip  of  the  people  than  their  grief.  "The 
Bonny  Earl  of  Murray"  has  been  already  quoted.^ 
"Young  Waters,"  ^  too,  though  not  "the  queen's  love,"  is  ' 
suspected  by  the  king;  and  a  glimpse  of  the  vocero  or 
lament  may  possibly  be  found  in  his  good-night  words: — 

" '  Aft  I  have  ridden  thro  Stiriing  town 

In  the  wind  hot  and  the  weit ;  , 

Bot  I  neir  rade  thro  Stirling  town 
Wi'  fetters  at  my  feet. 

" '  Aft  I  have  ridden  thro  Stirhng  town, 
In  the  wind  bot  and  the  rain; 
Bot  I  neir  rade  thro  Stirling  town 
Neir  to  return  again.'  " 

A  genuine  bit  of  vocero  is  surely  imbedded  in  the  frag- 
ments of  "Bonnie  James  Campbell,"^  when  the  widow 
sings :  — 

'  See  pp.  95  f. 

'  Dr.  W.  W.  Comfort  has  pointed  out  the  resemblance  of  the  motive 
in  this  ballad  —  the  queen,  by  calling  Young  Waters  fairest  of  all  the 
company,  excites  the  wrath  and  vengeance  of  the  king  —  to  a  passage 
in  Charlemagne^ s  Journey  to  Jerusalem. 

3  No.  210. 


CORONACHS  209 

" '  My  meadow  lies  green, 

And  my  corn  is  unshonr^ 
My  barn  is  to  build, 

And  my  babe  is  unborn.'  " 

Another  widow  is  more  heroic  and,  while  less  melodious 
in  her  lyric,  far  more  picturesque  and  definite.  The  laird 
of  Mellerstain  ^  was  slain  in  feud;  a  fragmentary  ballad 
from  the  Abbotsford  texts  hears  "a  lady  lamenting  sair." 

" '  Cowdenknows,^  had  ye  nae  lack  ? 

And  Earlstoun,  had  ye  nae  ihame? 
Ye  took  him  away  behind  my  back. 
But  ye  never  saw  to  bring  him  hame.' " 

She  looks  about  her  to  see  the  body  brought  back :  — 

"And  she  has  lookit  to  Fieldiesha, 
So  has  she  through  Yirdandstane; 
She  lookit  to  Earlstoun,  and  she  saw  the  Fans, 
But  he's  coming  hame  by  West  Gordon." 

She  sees  at  last  the  corpse.  "  How  can  I  keep  my  wits 
when  I  look  on  my  husband's  blood.''"  Then  for  a 
strong  close :  — 

" '  Had  we  been  men  as  we  are  women. 

And  been  at  his  back  when  he  was  slain. 
It  should  a  been  tauld  for  mony  a  long  year 
The  slaughter  o'  the  laird  of  Mellerstain.' " 

»  No.  230.    The  murder  took  place  in  1603. 

^  A  place  is  still  used  in  Scotland  to  denote  not  only  its  laird,  but  its 
inhabitants  as  a  body.  "Ettrick  has  been  here,"  or  "Teviotdale,"  said 
the  borderer  coming  back  to  a  plundered  home  and  noting  the  "  signs." 
Compare  the  Bible  phrase,  "  Reuben  had  great  searchings  of  heart," 
—  for  thel  tribe.  The  names  of  places  are  very  effective  in  this  frag- 
ment ;  comipare  also  the  final  stanza  with  that  from  Captain  Car,  quoted 
above,  p.  Ip5. 


210  THE  BALLADS 

The  wider  grief  c\  the  clan  coronach  is  echoed  by  the 
dialogue  with  Willie  Macintosh,^  who,  perhaps  in  the 
year  1550,  burned  Auchindown,  a  Gordon  castle,  and  is 
confused  in  the  ballad  with  another  Willie  whose  clans- 
men were  killed  by  Huntly  himself:  — 

" '  Bonny  Willie  Macintosh, 
W!'  are  left  ye  your  men  ?  ' 
'I  left  them  in  the  Stapler 

But  they'll  never  come  hame.' 

••'Bonny  Willie  Macintosh, 
Whare  now  is  your  men?' 
'I  left  them  in  the  Stapler, 
Sleeping  in  their  sheen.' "  ^ 

The  noblest  coronach  of  all  has  made  a  far  journey 
from  its  original  form.  Who  does  not  think  of  those  other 
faithful  followers,  the  Scots  lords  that  sleep  by  their 
leader,  half  owre  to  Aberdour,  fifty  fathom  under  sea  ? 
The  short  version  of  Percy's  "Reliques"  "remains, 
poetically,  the  best,"  as  Mr.  Child  declares,  who  can- 
not regard  the  ballad  as  historical;  here  is  the  heart  of 
the  story;  and  precisely  such  an  admirable  situation  and 
sequel  would  attract  all  manner  of  additional  details  in 
later  copies.^  The  eleven  stanzas  of  this  version,  how- 
ever, need  no  explanation  or  comment;   it  is  from  those 

1  No.  183. 

^  Shoes. 

^  Thus,  besides  the  well-known  "new  moon  late  yestreen,"  the  fatal 

mermaiden  rises  "with  coral  and  glass:"  — 

"  '  Here  's  a  health  to  you,  my  merrie  young  men. 
For  you  never  will  see  dry  land.'  " 

This  apparition,  without  the  warning,  occurs  in  another  ballad  of  ship- 
wreck. The  Mermaid,  no.  289,  which  is  still  sung. 


GOOD-NIGHTS  211 

exquisite  lines  already  quoted,*  where  ladies  of  the  court 
and  wives  of  the  absent  lords  wait  in  vain,  and  from  the 
fine,  impersonal  conclusion,  that  one  infers  the  old  la- 
ment.^ It  has  been  noted,  too,  that  something  of  this 
clan-grief  is  audible  in  the  concluding  stanzas  of  the 
"Baron  of  Brackley."  But  it  is  only  an  echo  of  old 
choral  cries;  the  voice  of  epic  and  tradition  drowns  it 
almost  to  extinction. 

Like  the  coronach,  and  yet  the  reverse  of  it,  is  the  Good- 
Night.  Strictly  taken,  this  should  be  the  supposed  last 
words  of  a  criminal  before  execution,  written  by  some 
humble  pen  and  sold  under  the  gallows.  In  balladry,^ 
however,  a  Good-Night  tells  the  hero's  story.  This  hero 
may  be  really  condemned  to  death  and  executed,  like 
Lord  Derwentwater,  or  expecting  execution,  like  Jock 
o'  the  Side  in  Newcastle  prison,  or  captured  in  arms  and 
killed  without  judicial  process,  like  Johnie  Armstrong, 
hanged,  with  his  followers,  "upon  growing  trees,"  or 
else  may  fly  the  country  and  escape  trial,  —  for  a  time,  — 
like  Lord  Maxwell,  whose  "Last  Good  Night"  suggested 
the    phrase  and  mood   of  Childe   Harold's  song.     Of 

*  See  above,  p.  129. 

^  Some  of  the  details  in  longer  versions  of  Spens  are  repeated  in 
Young  Allan,  no.  245,  when  forty-five  ships  (or  any  number  that  one 
will)  went  to  sea,  and  only  Young  Allan  comes  back  safe  with  his  craft, 
saved  by  the  skill  of  a  "bonny  boy"  who  takes  the  helm,  orders  feather- 
beds  and  canvas  laid  round  the  boat,  and  gets  Young  Allan's  daughter. 
The  interesting  feature  is  that  the  ship  obeys  the  boy,  and  at  his  voice 
springs  as  spark  from  fire,  as  leaf  from  tree. 

3  See  nos.  208,  187,  A,  169,  195.  305,  a  long  ballad,  tells  how  Out- 
law Murray  escaped  punishment  and  was  made  sheriff  of  Ettrick  forest. 


212  THE  BALLADS 

course  there  are  farewells  that  approach  the  Good-Night, 
as  that  pretty  stanza  in  which  a  captive  far  from  home, 
Young  Beichan  or  another,  bewails  his  fate:  — 

" '  My  hounds  they  all  go  masterless, 

My  hawks  they  flee  frae  tree  to  tree. 
My  youngest  brother  will  heir  my  lands, 
My  native  land  I'll  never  see.'" 

But  the  singer  of  this  stanza  is  not  under  the  shadow  of 
death,  as  Maxwell  is,  when  he  flies  from  home  and  kin, 
with,  — 

"  '  Adieu,  Lochmaben's  gates  so  fair. 

The  Langholm  shank,  where  birks  they  be, 
Adieu,  my  lady  and  only  joy. 

And  trust  me,  I  maunna  stay  with  thee.' " 

Maxwell  escaped  for  a  time,  but  Lord  Derwentwater  goes 
to  the  block;  the  omens  of  ill,  as  he  sets  out  for  London 
at  the  king's  command,  the  "old  gray-headed  man"  who 
starts  up  "with  a  pole-axe  in  his  hand,"  and  the  last 
words :  — 

"  •  The  velvet  coat  that  I  hae  on, 
Ye  may  tak  it  for  your  fee  ; 
And  a'  ye  lords  o'  merry  Scotland 
Be  kind  to  my  ladie  ! ' " — 

these  and  other  elements  of  the  ballad  are  of  the  essence 
of  traditional  song.  Peasants  of  Northumberland  told,  as 
late  as  a  century  ago,  how  the  river  ran  red  with  blood  by 
Derwentwater's  hall,  and  the  aurora,  brilliant  on  the 
night  of  his  execution,  was  long  called  by  his  name.  In 
"Johnie  Armstrong"  the  wrath  of  a  clan  is  heard. 
Johnie,  decoyed  to  Edinburgh  to  meet  his  king,  is  told 


GOOD-NIGHTS  213 

that  the  morrow  he  and  eightscore  men  shall  hang. 
"Asking  grace  of  a  graceless  face!"  he  cries  in  a  line  that 
we  meet  again;  and  he  is  close  upon  smiting  off  the 
monarch's  head.  But  "all  Edinburgh"  rises,  and  Arm- 
strong plays  the  man  in  vain,  a  "cowardly  Scot"  at  his 
back  running  him  through  the  body,  while  he  heartens 
his  men :  — 

"  ' .  .  .  Fight  on,  my  merry  men  all, 

I  am  a  little  hurt,  but  I  am  not  slain; 
I  will  lay  me  down  for  to  bleed  a  while, 
And  then  I'le  rise  and  fight  with  you  again.' " 

In  another  version,  he  speaks  his  Good-Night  on  hearing 
his  doom  from  the  king;   then  — 

" '  God  be  wi'  thee,  Kirsty,  my  brither, 

Lang  live  thou  Laird  of  Mangertoun ! 
Lang  mayst  thou  live  on  the  border-syde 
Or  thou  see  thy  brother  ryde  up  and  down. 

" '  And  God  be  wi'  thee,  Kirsty,  my  son, 
Whair  thou  sits  on  thy  nurse's  knee  ! 
But  and  thou  live  this  hundred  yeir. 
Thy  father's  better  thou 'It  never  be.'  " 

A  fine  Good-Night,  of  course,  can  be  made  of  the  con- 
cluding stanzas  of  "Mary  Hamilton,"  *  as  well  as  of  ran- 
dom stanzas  in  other  and  inferior  ballads.  It  is  blended 
with  the  familiar  legacy -formula.  A  dying  man,  murdered 
by  exceptionally  foul  means,  sends  farewell  to  his  wife, 
his  brother,  who  has  "a  heart  as  black  as  any  stone,"  his 
daughter  and  five  young  sons,  his  followers  and  good 
neighbors,  and  asks  that  two  lairds  will  have  his  fate 

*  See  below,  p.  243. 


214  THE  BALLADS 

always  in  mind  as  they  ride  the  border,  and  revenge 
him.^  A  covenanter,^  marching  to  fight,  bids  farewell,  in 
presentiment  of  death,  to  kin  and  home :  — 

" '  Now  farewell,  father,  and  farewell,  mother, 
And  fare  ye  weel,  my  sisters  three. 
And  fare  ye  well,  my  Earlstoun, 
For  thee  again  I'll  never  see.'" 

Closer  to  the  other  world  than  those  faint  funeral  cries, 
than  these  reminiscent  good-nights,  are  the  actual  relics 
of  superstition.  In  two  ballads  of  the  sea, "  Bonnie  Annie  " 
and  "Brown  Robyn's  Confession,"  ^  "fey  folk"  are  in  the 
ship,  and  lots  are  cast  to  see  what  victim  must  be  sacri- 
ficed. Jonah  in  the  first  case  proves  quite  unreasonably 
to  be  Bonnie  Annie;  it  should  be  the  captain  who  has 
betrayed  her,  and  who,  fairly  enough,  refuses  to  throw 
her  overboard  ;    but  at  last :  — 

"  He  has  tane  her  in  his  arms  twa,  lo,  lifted  her  cannie. 
He  has  thrown  her  out  owre  board,  his  ain  dear  Annie." 

She  floats  to  Ireland,  and  he  buries  her  in  a  gold  cofiin. 
Brown  Robyn  only  gets  his  deserts,  when,  upon  his  own 
confession  of  monstrous  crimes,  his  sailors  tie  him  to  a 
plank  and  throw  him  into  the  sea.  But  his  "fair  confes- 
sion" brings  along  the  Blessed  Virgin  and  her  Son;  she 
asks,  will  Robyn  go  back  to  his  men,  or  to  heaven  with 
her  ?  He  chooses  and  gets  the  second  alternative.  These 
pretty  ballads  of  the  sea  are  matched  by  more  gruesome 

1  Death  of  Parcy  Reed,  no.  193,  B. 
'  Bothwell  Bridge,  no.  206. 
'  Nos.  24,  57. 


FAIRY   BALLADS  215 

stuff.  "James  Harris,"  or  the  "Daemon  Lover"  by 
Scott's  title,  would  have  made  a  fine  tale,  and  has  been 
"improved"  into  some  elegance;  its  traditional  guise  is 
homely  to  a  degree,  being  best  preserved  in  a  broadside 
formidably  called  "A  Warning  for  Married  Women, 
being  an  example  of  Mrs.  Jane  Reynolds  .  .  .  born  near 
Plymouth,  who,  having  plighted  her  troth  to  a  Seaman, 
was  afterwards  married  to  a  Carpenter,  and  at  last  carried 
away  by  a  Spirit,  the  manner  how  shall  presently  be 
recited."  Set  to  "a  West-Country  tune,"  this  ballad  tells 
how  James  Harris,  the  seaman,  returns  as  a  spirit,  and 
tempts  our  wife  away  from  the  carpenter-husband  and 
their  three  children :  — 

tr        "And  so  together  away  they  went 
From  off  the  Enghsh  shore. 
And  since  that  time  the  woman-kind 
Was  never  seen  no  more." 

The  recited  Scottish  copies  draw  no  such  decent  veil  over 
the  wife's  fate.  When  she  sails  two  leagues,  in  version  D, 
which  Child  thinks  the  best  of  all,  she  begins  to  remember 
those  whom  she  has  left.  The  demon  lover  consoles:  he 
will  show  her  "where  the  white  lilies  grow  on  the  banks 
of  Italy."  At  three  leagues,  "gurly  grew  the  sea,"  and 
grim  his  face.  He  will  now  show  her  where  the  lilies 
grow  "  in  the  bottom  of  the  sea." 

Commerce  of  mortal  with  creatures  of  the  other  world 
is  among  the  oldest  themes  in  story.  "Thomas  Rymer,"  ^ 
one  of  the  ballads  recited  by  that  very  useful  person,  Mrs. 
1  The  ballads  which  follow  are  nos.  37,  39,  42,  113,  40,  41. 


216  THE   BALLADS 

Brown  of  Falkland,  and  also  told  as  a  romance  in  the 
poem  "Thomas  of  Erceldoune,"  there  mingled  with 
prophecy  and  politics,  is  based  on  the  tale  of  a  man  who 
is  favored  with  a  fairy's  love  and  with  an  excursion  to  the 
fairy  world.  To  kiss  a  fairy  or  a  ghost,  as  we  learn  from 
other  ballads,  puts  a  mortal  within  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
dark  powers;  if  he  eats  food  in  fairyland,  moreover,  he 
will  never  come  back  to  earth.  In  our  ballad  the  "queen 
of  Elfland  "  very  considerately  takes  with  her  a  mortal  loaf 
and  "claret  wine"  as  Thomas's  refreshment;  for  True 
Thomas  must  come  back,  and  be  the  prbphet  of  Tweed- 
side,  after  seven  years  in  the  lower  world.  As  may  be 
supposed,  the  theme  of  this  ballad  has  almost  endless 
connections  with  romance, tale,  and  myth;  enough  for  our 
purposes  that  it  tells  simply  and  prettily  the  story  of  True 
Thomas's  meeting  with  the  elf-queen,  whom  he  takes  at 
first  for  the  Holy  Virgin,  his  kisses,  the  long  journey  in 
darkness  near  the  roar  of  the  sea,  and  talk  by  the  way. 
In  "Tam  Lin,"  considerably  touched  by  Burns,  another 
old  theme  gets  ballad  treatment.  Janet  has  a  tryst  at 
Carterhaugh,  a  place  where  Ettrick  and  Yarrow  join,  with 
no  earthly  knight,  but  with  an  elfin  grey.  "  Who  are 
you  ?"  she  asks  him,  against  the  ancient  law;  but  Tam  is 
a  mortal,  carried  off  by  the  Queen  of  Fairies.  To  rescue 
him,  Janet  must  pull  him  down  at  midnight  from  horse- 
back in  the  fairy  ride.  He  turns  to  various  shapes  in  her 
arms,  esk,  adder,  bear,  lion,  red-hot  iron,  burning  brand; 
then,  as  he  has  directed,  she  throws  him  into  "well 
water,"  a  kind  of  baptism,  and  he  is  once  again  "a  naked 


PRETERNATURAL   LOVERS  217 

knight."  Jenny,  blithe  as  a  bird,  covers  him  with  her  green 
mantle;  and  the  Queen  of  the  Fairies  vents  her  vain  rage 
from  a  bush  of  broom.  Less  potent  by  title,  but  here  more 
dangerous,  is  the  mermaid  who  is  beloved  and  then  de- 
serted by  Clerk  Colvill,  or  Colvin;  she  has  many  relatives 
in  European  tales,  and  many  ancestors  in  legend  and 
myth.  The  Scottish  ballad,  another  of  Mrs.  Brown's  reci- 
tations, is  effective  if  imperfect.  The  clerk  promises  his 
new-wed  wife  not  to  go  near  the  Wall  o'  Stream  and  visit 
the  mermaiden  again.  He  does  it,  of  course,  and  finds 
the  mermaid  washing  a  sark  of  silk,  bides  with  her,  and 
feels  cruel  pains  in  his  head.  "Cut  a  strip  from  my  sark, 
and  bind  it  about  your  head;  you  will  be  cured,"  says  she; 
but  he  is  killed.  At  first  he  seeks  to  slay  her,  but  she 
changes  merrily  to  her  fish-form  and  disappears  in  the 
stream.  He  rides  sadly  back  to  die  near  mother,  brother, 
and  wife.  The  tables,  however,  are  turned  in  a  pretty 
little  ballad  ^  from  Shetland,  with  an  ending  suggestive 
of  Heine  in  his  favorite  sudden  close.  A  woman  is  rocking 
her  child,  and  sings  to  it  that  she  would  fain  know  its 
father.  Up  starts  one  who  claims  that  honor,  however 
grimly  he  may  look. 

" '  I  am  a  man  upo  the  Ian, 

An  I  am  a  silkie  in  the  sea.'  .  .  . 

" '  It  was  na  weel,'  quo  the  maiden  fair, 
'It  was  na  weel,  indeed,'  quo  she, 
'  That  the  great  Silkie  of  Sule  Skerrie 

Suld  hae  come  and  aught  a  bairn  to  me.' 

^  The  Great  Silkie  (seal)  of  Sule  Skerry,  dictated  in  1852  by  an  old 
lady  of  Shetland. 


218  THE   BALLADS 

"Now  he  has  taen  a  purse  of  goud, 
And  he  has  put  it  upo  her  knee, 
Saym,  *Gie  to  me  my  little  young  son, 
An  tak  thee  up  thy  nourris-fee. 

" '  An  it  sail  come  to  pass  on  a  simmer's  day, 
When  the  sun  shines  het  on  evera  stane. 
That  I  will  tak  my  little  young  son. 
An  teach  him  for  to  swim  the  faem. 

" '  An  thu  sail  marry  a  proud  gunner. 

An  a  proud  gunner  I'm  sure  he'll  be ; 
An  the  very  first  schot  that  ere  he  schoots, 
He'll  schoot  baith  my  young  son  and  me.' " 

Finally,  in  a  ballad  which  tells  how  closely  the  singing  of 
it  is  knit  in  with  its  very  being,  but  which  is  only  a  frag- 
ment, we  have  the  mortal  woman  yearning  for  her  mortal 
baby  from  the  exile  of  Elfland,  whither  she  has  been 
taken  to  nurse  the  elf-queen's  bairn.  The  repetitions  lead 
up  to  the  queen's  promise  that  when  the  bairn  stands, 
the  nurse  may  go  back  home.  The  musical  opening 
stanzas  have  been  already  quoted  above.*  "Hind  Etin," 
another  ballad  of  the  union  of  mortal  and  elf,  has  suf- 
fered severely  in  tradition;  in  Scandinavian  versions  it  is 
effective  enough. 

Another  group  ^  deals  simply  with  transformation  by 
magic  and  the  happy  solution,  if  such  is  to  be.  Three  of 
these  are  alike  in  essential  features.  "Kemp  Owyne," 
where  incremental  repetition  is  admirably  used  in  the  dis- 
enchanting process,  tells  how  the  kemp  frees  Dove  Isabel 

1  See  p.  35. 

2  Nos.  34,  35,  36,  270,  32,  33. 


TRANSFORMATION   BALLADS  219 

from  a  mysterious  Craigie's  sea,  where  she  lies  enchanted 
into  a  most  repulsive  beast  with  her  hair  twisted  about 
a  tree-trunk.  At  each  of  the  kisses  which  he  gives  her, 
the  hair  loosens  by  a  fold,  and  he  gets  first  a  belt,  then  a 
ring,  then  a  "royal  brand,"  all  of  great  virtue.  She  steps 
out  "as  fair  a  woman  as  fair  could  be."  In  "Allison 
Gross,"  a  witch  of  that  name  turns  a  girl  into  an  ugly 
worm ;  but  the  Queen  of  Fairies  releases  her.  The  Laily 
Worm  (or  loathsome  serpent)  and  the  Machrel  of  the 
Sea  are  brother  and  sister,  so  transformed  by  a  bad  step- 
mother; the  "worm"  is  about  to  kill  the  eighth  knight 
that  has  come  along,  but  it  is  his  own  father.  The  step- 
mother is  forced  to  restore  son  and  daughter  to  human 
shape,  and  then  is  burned  to  death. ^  In  "The  Earl  of 
Mar's  Daughter,"  this  young  woman  sees  a  dove  on  a 
tower,  calls  it,  and  brings  it  to  her  bower;  but  Cow-me- 
doo  turns  at  evening  tide  into  a  handsome  youth,  whom 
his  mother,  skilled  in  magic  spells,  thus  transforms  to 
pleasure  himself  with  fair  maids.  She  bears  him  children, 
whom  he  carries  off  to  his  mother;  and  she  will  marry 
nobody  for  three  and  twenty  years,  when  a  lord  comes 
to  woo  her.  "I'm  content  to  live  with  my  bird,  Cow- 
me-doo."  "That  bird," says  the  father,  "shall  be  killed." 
Cow-me-doo  goes  to  his  mother  for  help;  she  sends  four 
and  twenty  sturdy  men,  disguised  as  storks,  while  the 
seven  sons  fly  along  as  swans,  and  their  father  as  a  gay 
goshawk.   They  arrive  in  time  to  stop  the  marriage;  and 

1  This  ballad  in  the  Old  Lady's  Manuscript  is  "pure  tradition,  and 
has  never  been  touched  by  a  pen." 


220  THE  BALLADS 

"ancient  men,"  who  have  been  at  weddings  these  sixty 
years,  aver  they  never  saw  "such  a  curious  wedding-day." 
Behind  the  homely  phrases,  however,  lies  a  pretty  tale. 
"King  Henry"  is  a  variant  of  the  story  told  by  the  wife  of 
Bath :  a  hideous  creature  begs  shelter,  food,  and  lodging 
of  the  king,  and  in  the  morning  is  revealed  as  a  beautiful 
woman.  "Kempy  Kay"  is  mere  foulness  in  describing  a 
repulsive  creature  whom  the  kemp  seeks  for  bride;  but, 
in  compensation,  "The  Wee  Wee  Man"  offers  a  charm- 
ing study  in  miniature. 

This  is  all  magic,  white  or  black;  it  meddles  with  no 
world  beyond,  save  the  vague  realm  of  faery,  and  it  calls 
no  spirits  from  their  haunt.  Three  ballads,  one  of  them 
supremely  good,  deal  with  the  spirit  world  and  the  doings 
of  the  parted  soul:  and  a  fourth,  poorer  than  the  usual 
poor  ballad,  nevertheless  echoes  the  best-known  of  all 
modern  ghost-poems.^  "The  Unquiet  Grave,"  a  slight 
but  pretty  thing,  has  features  in  common  with  the  second 
lay  of  Helgi  in  the  Norse  Edda,  and  was  taken  down  from 
recitation  in  Sussex.  A  youth  mourns  at  his  sweetheart's 
grave  for  a  year;  then  she  speaks  and  complains  that  he 
disturbs  her  rest.  "I  crave  a  kiss  of  your  clay-cold  lips." 
"It  would  be  your  death,"  is  the  answer. 

"  '  'T  is  down  in  yonder  garden  green, 
Love,  where  we  used  to  walk. 
The  finest  flower  that  e'er  was  seen 
Is  withered  to  a  stalk,'  "  — 

perhaps  as  much  too  neat  as  the  final  stanza  is  too  feebly 

'  Nos.  78,  77,  272,  79. 


RETURN   OF  THE  DEAD  221 

pious  for  ballad  style.  "Sweet  William's  Ghost,"  ^  to  use 
the  critical  word-of-all-work,  is  far  more  convincing.  To 
get  the  meaning  of  ballad-treatment  in  a  case  like  this,  the 
reader  should  compare  not  so  much  the  obvious  parallels 
in  tradition  as  poems  like  Wordsworth's  "Laodamia"  or 
Goethe's  "Braut  von  Corinth,"  poems,  noble  as  they  are, 
which  have  that  second  intention  never  found  in  a  sound 
ballad  of  tradition.  William  comes  back  from  the  grave  / 
and  asks  Margaret  for  his  "faith  and  troth."  She  desires 
a  kiss,  and  he  gives  her  the  usual  warning.  She  stretches 
out  her  hand,  or,  in  another  version,  a  stick  on  which  she 
has  "stroked  her  troth,"  and  returns  him  his  plighted 
faith.  He  thanks  her,  and  vanishes;  but  she  follows  him 
far  to  his  grave,  only  to  be  told  that  there  is  no  room  there 
for  her,  —  or  that  there  is  room.  In  one  version,  before 
she  will  give  back  her  troth,  she  asks  her  lover  a  question 
about  the  other  world,  a  question  perhaps  not  without 
significance:  What  becomes  of  women  who  die  in  tra- 
vail ?  Their  beds,  he  replies,  are  made  in  heaven  by  our 
Lord's  knee,  well  set  about  with  gillyflowers.  Spirits 
often  demand  back  or  give  back  plighted  faith;  in  the 
"Child  of  Bristowe,"^  a  dead  father  makes  the  effort 
twice.  Rubbing  the  stick  may  be  a  precaution  in  transfer, 
to  avoid  direct  touch,  as  savages  rub  an  afflicted  part  upon 

1  On  comparison  with  the  Helgi  lay,  see  Bugge,  Heltedigtene,  i,  206  ff. 
(1896). 

2  Ed.  Hazlitt,  v,  373  ff. 

"  Therefor,  sone,  y  pray  the, 
Get  me  my  trouthe  y  left  with  the, 
And  let  me  wynde  my  way."    , 


222  THE  BALLADS 

a  tree  to  get  rid  of  the  disease.*  But  the  lover  sometimes 
came  back  to  claim  not  his  troth,  but  the  bride  herself. 
"If  ever  the  dead  come  for  the  quick,  be  sure,  Mar- 
garet, I'll  come  again  for  thee,"  promises  the  hero  of  this 
ballad;  and  if  "The  Suffolk  Miracle,"  even  more  than 
"James  Harris,"  is  "blurred,  enfeebled,  and  disfigured" 
in  broadside  shape,  it  tells,  after  its  silly  and  imperfect 
fashion,  the  tale  found  everywhere  in  Europe,  often  in 
ballad  form,  the  basis  of  Burger's  famous  "Lenore,"  — 
which  was  at  one  time  thought  to  have  been  taken  from 
"The  Suffolk  Miracle"  itself.^  This,  however,  Burger 
never  saw;  nor  could  it  inspire  anybody  or  anything.  For- 
tunately we  do  not  leave  the  matter  here.  If  the  clumsy 
broadside  marks  as  low  a  fall  as  decent  materials  can  ever 
reach,  traditional  verse  of  any  land  seldom  rises  to  the 
height  of  our  best  "supernatural"  ballad,  "The  Wife  of 
Usher's  Well."  "Nothing  that  we  have,"  says  Mr.  Child, 
"is  more  profoundly  affecting."  And  it  is  quite  suflBcient 
as  it  stands  in  the  Minstrelsy  version  from  the  recitation 
of  an  old  woman  in  Lothian.  Even  so  good  a  poet  as 
Allingham  has  gained  little  by  combination,  and  has  lost 
pitiably  by  invention  where  he  supplies  a  stanza  of  his 
own  "to  complete  the  sense."  There  is  a  background  of 
old  legends,  of  old  myth:  the  mother  will  have  ocean 
storms  never  cease  till  her  three  sons  come  back,  and  in 

*  Interesting  is  Uhland's  note  on  the  loss  of  color  in  trees,  or  the  like, 
accounting  for  paleness  and  what  not,  Kl.  Schrift.  iii,  405,  and  note  to 
Volkslieder,  no.  99,  p.  488. 

'  Child,  V,  60,  note. 


LEGEND  223 

the  mirk  November  night  they  do  come,  with  signs  of  the 
other  world  upon  them;  she  welcomes  them  with  all  she 
has,  makes  their  bed  wide,  and  sits  down  by  them,  till 
the  crowing  of  the  cocks,  here  faintly  reminiscent  of  Scan- 
dinavian mythology,  calls  them  to  their  place.  What 
marks  our  ballad,  however,  is  its  singular  dignity,  its 
reticence.  The  repetitions,  while  of  the  traditional  bal- 
lad form,  are  impressive  and  not  loquacious;  and  the 
concluding  stanza,  spoken  by  the  youngest  son,  would 
be  hard  to  surpass :  — 

"  '  Fare  ye  weel,  my  mother  dear, 
Fareweel  to  barn  and  byre ; 
And  fare  ye  weel,  the  bonny  lass 
That  kindles  my  mother's  fire.'  "  * 


v 


IV.    LEGENDARY    BALLADS 


Many  of  the  ballads  named  in  the  preceding  section 
could  be  transferred  to  this,  and  some  now  to  be  described, 
if  regarded  from  another  point  of  view,  might  well  take 
their  places  elsewhere;  on  the  whole,  however,  the  general^ 
idea  of  transjtioiL.thi'Dugh  locaLajid  historical  pieces  to 
the  deliberate  epic  of  the  chronicle  class  willjustify  the 
arrangement  winch  haTTaeen  made. 


OaSsicaTTraditions,  which  probably  gave  Hero  and 

'  A  version  from  Shropshire,  and  one  from  North  CaroHna,  in  the 
United  States,  make  the  widow  pray  to  Christ,  or  to  God ;  in  the 
former,  Jesus  sends  the  three  sons  back,  and  they  escort  their  mother  to 
the  door  of  heaven,  where  Jesus  bids  her  return  to  repent  for  nine  days, 
then  takes  her  in.  In  the  second  version,  the  oldest  "baby"  wakes  up 
his  brothers  and  bids  farewell  to  the  mother.  —  Child,  iii,  513;  v,  294. 


224  THE  BALLADS 

Leander  as  a  theme  to  so  many  ballads  of  the  conti- 
nent, have  sent  a  fragment  to  the  far  coast  of  Shetland. 
"King  Orfeo,"  of  course,  comes  directly  from  medieval 
romance;  but  the  old  story  of  Orpheus  and  Eurydice  is 
here,  changed  in  name  and  place,  but  still  more  changed 
by  its  genuine  and  traditional  ballad  setting.  It  may  be 
quoted  in  part,  omitting  the  almost  unintelligible  Scandi- 
navian refrain.  A  king  lives  in  the  east,  a  lady  in  the  west. 
Presumably  she  is  wooed  and  won,  but  tradition,  or  the 
singer's  memory,  is  silent  about  that.  The  king  goes 
hunting,  leaving  his  "Lady  Isabel"  alone,  and  at  last 
learns  her  fate :  the  king  of  Faery  has  pierced  her  bosom 
with  his  dart.  Some  verses  are  lost,  in  which  he  sees  her 
among  fairy  folk,  follows,  and  comes  to  a  gray  stone. 

"  Dan  he  took  oot  his  pipes  ta  play, 
Bit  sair  his  hart  wi'  dol  an  wae. 

"  And  first  he  played  da  notes  o'  noy, 
An  dan  he  played  da  notes  o'  joy. 

"  An  dan  he  played  da  god  gabber  reel, 
Dat  meicht  ha'  made  a  sick  hert  hale. 


"  '  Noo  come  ye  in  inta  wir  ha', ' 
And  come  ye  in  among  wis  a'.' 

"  Now  he  's  gaen  in  inta  dar  ha', 
An  he's  gaen  in  among  dem  a'. 

"Dan  he  took  out  his  pipes  to  play, 
Bit  sair  his  hert  wi'  dol  an  wae. 

*  A  messenger  has  come  from  behind  the  gray  stone,  and  asked  him 
into  the  hillside. 


KING  ORFEO  225 

"  An  first  he  played  da  notes  o'  noy, 
An  dan  .he  played  da  notes  o'  joy. 

"  An  dan  he  played  da  god  gabber  reel, 
Dat  meicht  ha'  made  a  sick  hert  hale. 

" '  Noo  tell  to  us  what  ye  will  hae  : 
What  sail  we  gie  you  for  your  play?' 

" '  What  I  will  hae  I  will  you  tell. 
An  dat  's  me  lady  Isabel.' 

" '  Yees  tak  your  lady,  an  yees  gaeng  hame. 
An'  yees  be  king  ower  a'  your  ain.' 

"He's  taen  his  lady,  an'  he  's  gaen  hame, 
An'  noo  he's  king  ower  a'  his  ain." 

Our  interest  here  is  aroused  in  the  concentration  upon  a 
single  situation,  with  thin  strips  of  narrative  at  beginning 
and  end,  and  in  the  inevitable  structure  of  the  piece.  The 
refrain  must  not  be  forgotten;  and  one  would  feel  no 
surprise  upon  hearing  that  the  ballad  was  a  real  ballad, 
danced  and  acted  as  well  as  sung.  In  any  case,  there  is  the 
story  of  Orpheus,  —  or  half  of  it,  —  in  Shetland ;  and 
it  is  a  purely  traditional,  oral  ballad.  When,  however,  a 
sacred  legend  grew  popular  in  verse  and  traditional,  it 
was  pretty  sure  to  be  written  down.  The  oldest  recorded 
English  ballad  is  of  this  class,^  and  was  preserved  until 
lately  in  a  thirteenth-century  manuscript  at  Trinity  Col- 
lege, Cambridge.  As  in  the  old  riddle  ballad  of  the  fif- 
teenth century,  "Inter  Diabolus  et  Virgo,"  the  repetitions 
are  here  in  part  neglected,  but  the  ballad  structure,  the 
simple  conception,  the  dialogue,  are  maintained,  not  to 
*  See  for  these  legends  and  carols,  nos.  23,  22,  21,  54,  55,  56, 155. 


226  THE  BALLADS 

mention  absurd  details  like  the  collusion  of  Judas's  sister 
in  the  theft  of  his  money,  and  the  trivial  motive  for  his 
betrayal  of  Christ.  In  smoother  but  similar  seven-beat 
verses,  two  to  the  stanza,  is  told  the  charming  little  legend 
of  St.  Stephen,  "clerk  in  King  Herod's  hall,"  who  is 
bringing  the  boar's  head,  the  right  Christmas  dish,  when 
he  sees  the  star  bright  over  Bethlehem  :  — 

"He  kyst  adoun  the  boris  bed  and  went  into  tbe  balle:       , 
'I  forsak  tbe,  Kyng  Herowdes,  and  thi  werkes  alle. 

"  'I  forsak  tbe,  Kyng  Herowdes,  and  thi  werkes  alle; 
Tber  is  a  cbyld  in  Bedlem  born  is  beter  than  we  alle.' " 

Is  Stephen  mad  ?  The  thing  is  as  true,  quoth  Herod,  as 
that  yon  capon  in  the  dish  shall  crow;  whereupon  the 
capon  crows  "Christus  natus  est!"  Stephen,  very  illogi- 
cally,  is  sent  out  to  be  stoned  to  death;  "and  therefore  is 
his  even  on  Christ's  own  day."  *  In  "The  Maid  and  the 
Palmer,"  a  woman  is  washing  at  the  well;  a  palmer  asks 
her  for  drink  and  is  told  she  has  neither  cup  nor  can.  "If 
your  lover  came  back,  you  'dfind  cups  and  cans."  She  says 
she  has  no  lover.  "Peace!  You  have  borne  nine  children!" 
She  asks  if  he  is  "the  good  old  man  that  all  the  world 
believes  upon,"  and  demands  penance.  In  Scandinavian 
ballads,  he  is  called  Jesus  outright.  He  tells  her  she  is  to 
be  a  stepping-stone  for  seven  years,  seven  more  a  clapper 
in  a  bell,  still  seven  again  she  must  "lead  an  ape  in  hell," 
and  may  then  come  maiden  home.  The  ultimate  source 
is  the  Samaritan  woman  blended  with  Mary  Magdalen 
'  S.  Stephen's  "own  day"  is  of  course  26th  December. 


SACRED  TRADITION  227 

and  even  with  Martha;  ^  but  the  EngHsh  version  from 
the  Percy  Foho  betrays  nothing  of  this.  Moreover  it  is  in 
the  usual  four-beat  ballad  measure  of  two  verses  and 
refrain.  The  other  tjiree  ballads  of  this  group  are  really 
carols.  In  the  "Cherry-Tree  Carol,"  Joseph  refuses  to 
pluck  Mary  one  cherry  from  the  orchard ;  whereupon  the 
unborn  babe  commands  the  highest  tree  to  bend  down 
and  give  fruit  to  his  mother.  In  "The  Carnal  and  the 
Crane,"  a  crow  wishes  to  know  many  things  about  the 
birth  of  Christ,  and  the  wise  crane  answers  him.  The  most 
interesting  legend  which  is  woven  in  here  is  that  of  the 
husbandman,  sowing  his  seed,  by  whom  Joseph,  Mary, 
and  Jesus  passed  in  their  flight.  Jesus  bids  him  God- 
speed; he  shall  fetch  ox  and  wain  to  carry  home  this  day 
the  corn  he  has  sown.  The  farmer  falls  on  his  knees; 
"thou  art  the  redeemer  of  mankind."  He  is  told  to  say, 
should  any  inquire,  that  Jesus  passed  by  him  as  he  was 
sowing  his  grain ;  Herod  comes  along  as  he  is  gathering 
the  crop,  and  is  furious  at  the  inference  of  a  captain  that 
"full  three  quarters  of  a  year"  have  elapsed  since  it 
was  sown.  "Dives  and  Lazarus,"  telling  the  familiar 
story,  is  remarkable  for  its  pervasive  incremental  repe- 
tition; it  is  in  the  four-line  ballad  measure.  Besides 
these  legendary  pieces  in  Child's  collection,  a  fresh  can- 
didate for  ballad  honors  has  recently  appeared  in  "The 
Bitter  Withy,"  or  "The  Withies;"  and  it  is  hard  to  see 
why  it  should  not  be  ranged  with  the  rest.  It  has  fallen 
into  homely  courses  of  style  and  phrase,  and  the  ex- 

1  Child,  i,  229. 


228  THE  BALLADS 

planatory  stanza  with  which  it  closes  is  very  rare  in  bal- 
ladry, "St.  Stephen  and  Herod"  furnishing  perhaps  the 
only  parallel.  Professor  Gerould,  in  a  paper  read  before 
the  Modern  Language  Association,  shows  that  tales 
about  the  childhood^of  Christ,  taken  from  the  apocryphal 
gospels,  were  current  in  both  the  north  and  the  south 
of  Britain.  The  ball-playing  is  conventional;  the  sun- 
beam-bridge and  the  catastrophe  are,  of  course,  the  main 
affair;  and  the  chastisement,  along  with  the  reason  for 
the  withy's  nature,  is  not  unskilfully  added. 


THE   BITTER   WITHY  > 


As  it  fell  out  on  a  Holy  day 

The  drops  of  rain  did  fall,  did  fall, 
Our  Saviour  asked  leave  of  His  mother  Mary 

If  He  might  go  play  at  ball. 

"  To  play  at  ball  my  own  dear  Son, 
It 's  time  You  was  going  or  gone. 
But  be  sure  let  me  hear  no  complaint  of  You 
At  night  when  You  do  come  home." 

It  was  upling  scorn  and  downling  scorn, 
Oh,  there  He  met  three  jolly  jerdins:  ^ 

Oh,  there  He  asked  the  three  jolly  jerdins 
If  they  would  go  play  at  ball. 

'  Communicated  by  Mr.  F.  Sidgwick  to  Noies  and  Queries,  Series  10. 
no.  83,  with  information  in  regard  to  the  ballad's  provenience  and 
traditional  character.  See  also  The  Journal  of  the  Folk-Song  Society, 
ii,  205,  300  ff.,  for  other  versions. 

'  In  the  Sussex  version,  "jolly  dons;"  Herefordshire,  "jolly  jor- 
rans;"  Manchester,  merely  "children;"  and  in  a  carol,  which  tells 
the  first  part  of  the  story,  "  virgins." 


THE   BITTER  WITHY  229 

"Oh,  we  are  lords'  and  ladies'  sons. 
Born  in  bower  or  in  hall. 
And  You  are  but  some  poor  maid's  child 
Born'd  in  an  ox's  stall." 

"If  you  are  lords'  and  ladies'  sons, 
Born'd  in  bower  or  in  hall. 
Then  at  the  very  last  I'll  make  it  appear 
That  I  am  above  you  all." 

Our  Saviour  built  a  bridge  with  the  beams  of  the  sun. 

And  over  He  gone,  He  gone  He. 
And  after  followed  the  three  jolly  jerdins, 

And  drownded  they  were  all  three. 

It  was  upling  scorn  and  downling  scorn. 
The  mothers  of  them  did  whoop  and  call. 

Crying  out,  "Mary  mild,  call  back  your  Child, 
For  ours  are  drownded  all." 

Mary  mild,  Mary  mild,  called  home  her  Child, 

And  laid  our  Saviour  across  her  knee. 
And  with  a  whole  handful  of  bitter  withy 

She  gave  Him  slashes  three. 


o" 


Then  He  says  to  His  mother,  "Oh!  the  withy,  oh!  the 
withy. 

The  bitter  withy  that  causes  me  to  smart,  to  smart. 
Oh!   the  withy  it  shall  be  the  very  first  tree 

That  perishes  at  the  heart." 

Best  known  of  all  the  legends,  and  a  widespread  ballad, 
is  "Sir  Hugh,"  which  should  also  be  read  in  the  exquisite 
Prioress^  Tale  of  Chaucer  for  the  difference  between 
artless  and  artistic  narrative.  The  two  stories  are  distinct; 
nothing  in  tHe~15allad  corresponds  to  the  devotion  of  the 
little  "clergeoun"  and  his  reward;   but  one  mother  is  as 


230  THE  BALLADS 

pathetic  as  the  other,  and  a  feature  of  Chaucer's  tale  has 
crept  into  the  traditional  Scottish  version  of  the  ballad. 
"  Gin  ye  be  there,  my  sweet  Sir  Hugh,  I  pray  you  to  me 
speak,"  and  again,  "Where'er  ye  be, my  sweet  Sir  Hugh," 
may  be  compared  with  the  description  of  the  other 
searcher  "with  mother's  pity  in  her  breast  enclosed." 

Legend  clung  to  old  ballad  ways.  But  romance, 
specially  as  itJg-J£told  by  the  minstrels,  works  into  the 
chronicle  and^  longer  epic  styl^  "Hind  Horn,"  ^  to  be 
sure,  is  still  situation  with  a  mere  touch  of  explanatory 
narrative;  it  gives  "little  more  than  the  catastrophe  of  the 
famous  Gest  of  King  Horn,"  adding  the  silver  wand  with 
larks  on  it  —  birds  to  tell  Horn  of  events  ?  —  and  the  ring 
whose  stone  pales  at  approach  of  misfortune,  as  romantic 
features.  But  the  situation  is  everything,  and  it  is  treated 
in  thorough  ballad  wiseT  repetition,  refrain,  and  a  local, 
mainly  Scottish,  setting.  "Young  Beichan,"  ^  however,  a 
favorite  both  in  Scottish  tradition  and  in  English  broad- 
side, —  it  is  one  with  "The  Loving  Ballad  of  Lord  Bate- 
man,"  which  Cruikshank  illustrated,  —  runs  well  to  the 
romantic  plan.  Beichan,  whose  adventures  agree  in  part 
with  those  in  the  legend  of  Gilbert  Beket,  father  of 
St.  Thomas,  is  taken  prisoner  by  a  Moor,  released  by  the 
daughter  on  promise  of  marriage,  goes  home,  and  is  about 
to  wed  another  woman,  when  Susie  Pye,  the  Moor's 
daughter,  appears  at  his  gates,  is  recognized,  baptized  as 
"Lady  Jane,"  and  married  to  Beichan.  Dialogue  is 
retained,  but  there  is  abundant  explanation  as  well  as 
'  No.  17.  2  No_  53, 


MINSTREL   BALLADS  231 

narrative.    In  one  amusing  case  the  reciter  or  minstrel 
reveals  himself  :  — 

'*  An'  I  hop'  this  day  she  sal  be  his  bride,"  — 

he  says  of  Susie,  at  her  love's  gate,  just  as  the  complica- 
tion is  to  be  announced.  With  "Sir  Cawline,"  ^  as  with 
"King  Estmere,"  already  noticed,  we  are  fairly  in  the 
romantic  ballads;  it  "may  possibly  be  formed  upon  a 
romance  in  stanzas,  which  itself  was  composed  from 
earlier  ballads,"  says  Professor  Child.  "Events"  crowd 
this  ballad  mightily.  Sir  Cawline,  sick  with  love  for  the 
king's  daughter,  meets  an  elritch  knight,  a  giant  who  is 
also  a  soldan,  and  finally  a  false  steward,  who  lets  loose 
a  lion  upon  the  unarmed  Cawline  at  his  prayers;  but  he 
wins  his  love  at  last,  and  they  have  "fifteen  sons."  An- 
other ballad  of  adventure  in  the  Percy  Manuscript,  "Sir 
Lionel,"  ^  has  kept  the  older  way,  and  may  show  the  sort 
of  ballad  out  of  which  a  romance  like  "Sir  Cawline"  was 
made;  there  are  also  traditional  versions,  likewise  in  two- 
line  stanzas  with  refrain.  These  ballads  keep  their 
dignity;  absurdity  and  helplessness,  however,  beset  such 
a  poor  affair  as  "John  Thomson  and  the  Turk,"  ^  which 
belongs  in  the  negligible  list. 
^lijiatceLhallads^  so  called,  either  treat  a  romantic  old 
theme  with  a  kind  of  impudent  ease,  or  else  treat  an  easy 
theme  with  success^  "The  Boy  and  the  Mantle"  is  "a 
good  piece  of  minstrelsy,"  as  Professor  Child  calls  it,  but 

1  No.  61;  see  Child,  ii,  61.  =*  No.  18. 

3  No.  266.  *  See  nos.  29,  30,  31,  267,  273. 


232  THE  BALLADS 

it  "would  not  go  to  the  spinning-wheel  at  all."  "King 
Arthur  and  King  Cornwall"  and  "The  Marriage  of  Sir 
Gawain,"  one  in  eight,  the  other  in  seven  fragments,  from 
the  mutilated  Percy  Manuscript,  areof  the  same  minstrel 
source,  and  treat  matters  well  known  in  romance.  These 
are  long  poems.  ^  Shorter  and  more  familiar,  meant  for 
less  critical  audiences,  are  edifying  stories  like  the  "Heir 
of  Linn,"  and  that  prime  favorite  with  humble  folk,  the 
discomfiture  of  royalty  at  the  hands  of  a  yokel;  for  the 
style  and  the  faint  waft  of  tradition  about  it,  "King  Ed- 
ward and  the  Tanner"  is  included  with  ballads,  while 
"Rauf  Coilyear"  and  others  go  with  "metrical  tales."  So 
we  pass  through  the  jocose  to  the  slightly  improper,  and 
through  the  slightly  improper  to  the  merry  narratives 
which  are  both  "broad"  and  "gross."  The  list  of  these 
is  not  long;  ^  and  one  of  them,  "  The  Baffled  Knight,"  is 
harmless  enough.  The  cynical  "Crow  and  Pie,"  conceded 
to  minstrel-making,  is  very  close  to  the  rout  of  such  things 
as  Tom  D'Urfey  selected  for  his  "Pills  to  Purge  Melan- 
choly "  and  modern  collectors  gather  in  privately  printed 
and  privately  perused  editions.  Of  the  "Broomfield 
Hill,"  which  the  freedom  of  a  couple  of  centuries  ago 
allowed  women  to  quote  as  they  pleased,  versions  dif- 
fer;   one,  says  Mr.  Child   very  happily,  one    smells  of 

^  They  are  ballads  because,  as  Professor  Kittredge  says,  in  his  Intro- 
duction to  the  Cambridge  edition  of  the  Ballads,  p.  xxvii,  they  are 
''comjX)sed  in  the  popular  style  and  perpetuated  for  a  time  by  oral 
tradition." 

2  The  editors  of  the  Cambridge  edition  were  forced  to  leave  out  but 
five  of  the  three  hundred  and  five  ballads  printed  in  the  large  collection. 


HUMOROUS   BALLADS  233 

the  broom  and  another  of  the  groom.  The  lady  makes 

tryst  with  a  knight  at  the  Broomfield  Hill,  but  is  told  by 

a  witch-woman  how  she  can  come  maiden  home.   The 

knight  sleeps  until  too  late;    and  in  the  better  version 

there  is  a  good  dialogue  between  him  and  his  steed  or 

hawk. 

"'I  stamped  wi'  my  foot,  master, . 

And  gar'd  my  bridle  ring,  " 

But  na  kin'  thing  wald  waken  ye 
Till  she  was  past  and  gane,'  " 

says  the  horse;   and  the  hawk:  — 

" '  I  clapped  wi'  my  wings,  master. 
And  aye  my  bells  I  rang. 
And  aye  cried.  Waken,  waken,  master. 
Before  the  ladye  gang.'  " 

There  is  all  the  difference  in  the  world  between  this,  or  a 
jolly  bit  of  fun  like  "Our  Goodman"  already  cited,  and 
a  thoroughly  debased  and  dingy  affair  like  "The  Keach  in 
the  Creel."  "The  Jolly  Beggar,"  especially  in  the  Old 
Lady's  Manuscript,  makes  a  kind  of  amends  at  the  close, 
and  has  a  dash  and  jingle  in  it  that  half  redeem  it.  And 
the  Old  Lady  did  take  it  into  her  manuscript!  "The 
Friar  in  the  Well"  is  an  ancient  story;  and  four  other 
ballads  of  this  merry  kind  are  harmless  enough:  the 
"Crafty  Farmer,"  who  baffles  a  highwayman,  riding  off 
on  the  thief's  horse  with  the  thief's  plunder,  besides  sav- 
ing his  own  saddle-bags;  two  matrimonial  jests,  "The 
Wife  Wrapt  in  Wether's  Skin,"  a  drastic  taming  of  the 
shrew,  and  "The  Farmer's  Curst  Wife,"  who  is  returned 
by  Satan  as  impossible  in  a  well-ordered  Inferno,  —  a 


234  THE  BALLADS 

ballad  sung  in  Sussex  with  a  "Chorus  of  whistlers"  to 
the  two-line  stanza;  and  finally  the  never-tiring  verses 
of  "Get  Up  and  Bar  the  Door,"  which  even  a  Goethe 
condescended  to  translate  from  this  or  whatever  other 
version. 

Still  mainly  in  the  ballad  style  and  formed  by  the  ballad 
structure  are  sundry  popular  and  traditional  pjer  vers  ions 
of  historical-iacL  These  vary  both  from  actual  tradition 
and  thoroughly  popular  conception  to  the  manufactured 
broadside  which  holds  a  few  shreds  of  communal  stuff, 
and  from  important  events  to  mere  local  tradition.  For 
the  tragic  account,  a  little  threnody  "current  throughout 
Scotland,"  as  well  as  in  England,  records  the  popular  but 
erroneous  belief  that  Jane_Seymoiirdied  from  the  Csesa- 
rean  section  at  the  birth  of  Pfmce  Edward.^  It  is  brief,  of 
course,  lyrical,  with  a  bit  of  dialogue,  and  a  commonplace 
for  close :  — 

"They  mourned  in  the  kitchen,  and  they  mourned  in 'the  ha', 
But  royal  King  Henry  mourn'd  langest  of  a'." 

A  fragment  in  the  Percy  Folio  reflects  popular  notions 
about  Thomas  Cromwell's  disgrace  and  death;  he  seems 
to  be  playing^-JollifTheTBaptist  to  Katharine  Howard's 
daughter  of  Herodias  and  bluff  King  Hal's  Herod.  Even 
more  popular  in  tone  is  "Queen  Eleanor's  Confession," 
still  sung  in  rural  England;  the  old  jest  of  a  husband  who 
disguises  himself  as  a  friar  in  order  to  shrive  his  wife  and 
hear  of  her  sins  against  him,  is  made  even  more  grim  by 
the  association,  also  in  friar's  garb,  of  the  queen's  lover. 
*  The  Death  of  Queen  Jane,  no.  170. 


JOURNALISTIC   BALLADS  235 

The  king,  when  all  was  heard,  "looked  over  his  left 

shoulder  .  .  . 

"  And  said,  '  Earl  Martial,  but  for  my  oath, 
Then  hanged  shouldst  thou  be.' " 

Grundtvig  says  that  this  ballad,  very  poorly  translated, 
is  recited  about  Denmark  with  a  Norwegian  queen  in  the 
main  part.^ 

At  the  other  extreme  from  such  popular  and  traditional 
verse  are  the  ballads  made  to  order,  as  it  were,  after  a  stir- 
ring event.  Journalism  triumphs  in  "Lord  Dejamere," 
one  version  of  which  was  taken  down  from  recitation  in 
Derbyshire,  but  must  have  been  learned  originally  from 
some  broadside  such  as  Professor  Child  prints  as  second 
choice.  We  miss  thejilt  and  swin^  of  the  throng^evep  at, 
third  or  foilftiniand,  in  this  caterwauling  rime.  It  is 
helpless  jog-trot,  not  the  spinster's  or  the  knitter's  tune, 
but  the  butterwoman's  rank  to  market;  compared  with 
the  rhythm  of  a  traditional  ballad,  with  its  style  and  form 
generally,  with  the  spirit  of  really  popular  verse,  these 
pieces  of  the  "Delamere"  sort  sink  out  of  sight,  as  if  they 
fell  from  " Sweet  William's  Ghost"  to  the  level  of  "  James 
Harris."  It  is  not  only  their  s£eech  that  bewrays  them. 
So  far  as  facts  go,  however,  there  is  as  much  perversion  in 
one  set  as  in  the  other.  Like  "  Lord  Delamere  "  in  style, 
though  better  in  execution,  are  sundry  ballads  based  on 
international  events  real  or  supposed.  "Hugh  Spencer's 
FeatsTirTranceT^prodigiously  patriotic  in  the  good  old 
"frog-eater"  vein  with  a  touch  of  Dr.  Johnson's  opinion 
1  Nos.  171,  156;  for  the  following,  see  207,  158,  164,  284. 


236  THE  BALLADS 

that  "foreigners  are  fools,"  has  plenty  of  repetition  and 
uses  the  ballad  commonplaces.  Here  is  the  familiar  choice 
of  three  steeds,  though  with  a  difference  and  an  extraor- 
dinary climax.  Hugh,  intending  to  joust  for  England's 
honor,  finds  no  mere  French  horse  that  can  bear  him, 
white,  brown,  or  black;  so  he  calls  for  his  old  hackney 
from  England.^  The  French  spear  breaks,  of  course; 
Spencer  cannot  get  an  English  substitute,  and  several 
spears  have  to  be  bound  together  for  his  use.  His  remark 
to  the  French  queen,  which  brings  about  this  tourney, 
must  have  surprised  the  court,  unaccustomed  as  it  was 
to  good,  bluff  English:  — 

" '  You  have  not  wiped  your  mouth,  madam, 
Since  I  heard  you  tell  a  lye.' " 

Finally  he  runs  amuck,  killing  all  sorts  of  warriors;  and 
the  frightened  monarch  of  France  agrees  to  peace  with 
England  on  any  terms. ^  "King  Henry  the  Fifth's  Con- 
quest of  France"  gives  the  story  of  the  tennis-balls  in 
dialogue,  then  briefly  sums  the  triumphant  battles  and 
the  march,  by  our  balladist's  account,  "to  Paris  gates." 
"John  Dory"  was  popular  enough  in  the  seventeenth 
century;  it  has  the  rollicking  manner  in  more  attractive 
guise.   John  Dory,  perhaps  Doria,  goes  to  Paris:  — 

'  These  ballads  are  straightforward,  at  least,  and  unsophisticated. 
The  Rose  of  England,  no.  166,  has  neither  quality,  but  is  an  elaborate 
allegory  of  the  white  and  red.  The  red  rose  of  Lancaster  is  rooted  up 
by  a  boar  (Richard  III),  and  so  on. 

^  In  B  and  C,  the  coal-black  steed  is  chosen;  C,  from  Aberdeen,  trans- 
fers its  patriotism  north  of  the  Tweed,  and  makes  "Sir  Hugh"  a  Scot. 
This  recited  version  is  full  of  incremental  repetition. 


BALLADS  OF  THE   SEA  237 

"  The  first  man  that  John  Dory  did  meet 
Was  good  King  John  of  France-a; 
John  Dory  could  well  of  his  courtesie, 
But  fell  down  in  a  trance-a," 

offering,  nevertheless,  to  bring  "all  the  churles  in  Merry 
England,"  bound,  before  the  king.  A  Cornishman 
named  Nicholl  meets  John  Dory's  ship,  and  the  boaster, 
after  a  hot  fight,  is  clapt  fast  under  hatches.  Not  so  good 
are  four  ballads  of  the  sea,^  broadsides,  but  probably 
enjoyed  by  their  humble  singers;  only  one  need  be  named. 
"The  Sweet  Trinity,"  a  ship  built  by  Sir  Walter  Raleigh 
in  the  Netherlands,  was  not  worthy  of  her  little  ship-boy, 
who  swam  off  with  an  auger,  and  sank  the  "false  gallaly," 
but  failed  to  get  the  reward  promised  him.  Our  best 
naval  piece,  of  course,  is  "Sir  Andrew  Barton;"  ^  it  is  of 
the  chronicle  order,  long,  awkward  in  diction,  but  has  the 
genuine  ballad  manner  in  treating  its  main  situation,  and 
tells  the  story  of  the  sea-fight  in  lively,  hearty  style.  The 
helpless  note,  of  course,  is  there.  "Henery"  Hunt,  the 
victim,  informer,  and  word-breaker,  — 

"  With  a  pure  heart  and  a  penitent  mind, "  — 

is  ridiculous;  but  an  older  version  may  have  done  him 
justice.  There  are  several  puzzles  in  naval  architecture 
which  all  the  study  of  ships  in  Henry  VIII's  time  has  not 
yet  solved;    and  an  old  superstition  survives  when  Lord 

>  Nos.  285,  286,  287,  288.  Raleigh  is  left  out  of  286,  B;  the  ship  is 
built  in  the  Lowlands,  but  is  called  The  Golden  Vanity. 

^  No.  167.  Henry  Martyn,  no.  250,  is  an  offshoot  of  the  longer  and 
older  ballad. 


238  THE  BALLADS 

Howard  throws  the  pirate's  headless  body  overboard, 
with  three  hundred  crowns  about  the  middle:  — 

"Whersoeuer  thou  lands,  itt  will  bury  thee." 
King  Hal,  too,  is  chivalrous;    he  would  give  a  hundred 
pound  if  Sir  Andrew  were  alive. 

These  are  English  ballads,  bad  and  good.  It  is  worthy 
of  note  that  Scots  ballads  of  the  same  class,  excepting  here 
and  there  an  "Earl  Bothwell"  with  its  "I  shall  you  tell 
how  it  befell,"  seldom  Hrnp  Ipto^tlip  dog-gprpl  sfylp,  but 
tend  to  keep  affirm  grasp  of  the  situation,  to  maintain  the 
old  structure  and  repetition,  and  to  observe  a  kind  of 
dramatic  brevity.  "The  Laird  o'  Logic"  presents  crisply 
arTadvenlure  at  the  Scottish  court  under  James  VI,  a 
gentlewoman  freeing  her  lover  from  prison  and  the  gal- 
lows; while  "Xing  James  and  Brown,"  from  the  Percy 
Folio,  tells  loosely  and  drearily  a  story  of  the  same  sover- 
eign in  his  younger  days.  Brown,  the  hero,  is  an  English- 
man, and  the  ballad  is  plainly  from  an  English  source. 
That  it  is  a  ballad,  however,  and  that  traditional  verse, 
even  when  sunk  to  the  broadside,  is  quite  a  different 
thing  from  journalism,  may  be  readily  seen  by  comparing 
it  with  a  poem  on  another  of  Brown's  adventures  written 
by  the  much -ridiculed  Elderton.  Scottish  versions  con- 
trive to  keep  a  better  traditional  tone,  even  in  such 
slight  and  unmeritable  pieces  as  "The  Laird  of  Waris- 
ton,"  where  the  laird  is  killed  by  a  servant  at  the  insti- 
gation of  the  wife.    She  had  some  excuse. 

"He  spak  a  word  in  jest, 
Her  answer  wasna  good  ; 


MARY   HAMILTON  239 

He  threw  a  plate  at  her  face. 
Made  it  a'  gush  out  blood.  .  .  . 

"The  Foul  Thief  knotted  the  tether. 
She  lifted  his  head  on  hie. 
The  nourice  drew  the  knot 
That  gard  lord  Wariston  die." 

Higher  verse  for  higher  themes.^  An  incident  of  feud  or 
raid,  a  burnt  castle  and  slain  inmates,  make  up  "Captain 
Car,"  already  cited,  and  "The  Fire  of  Frendraught," 
where  the  lady  of  the  castle  sets  it  on  fire  that  she  may 
destroy  a  hated  guest,  and  "The  Bonny  House  o'  Airlie," 
where  Argyll  burns  down  Lady  Margaret's  house,  but 
spares  her  life.  She  is  properly  defiant,  and  would  give 
not  only  her  house,  but  all  her  sons  for  Prince  Charlie. 
"James  Grant"  makes  a  clever  escape.  But  the  best  of 
all  is  that  ballad  of  crime  in  high  life,  "MaryjHamilton." 
It  is  evidently  founded  on  fact,  and  the  fact,  as  Scott 
pointed  out,  seems  to  have  been  a  case  of  child-murder  at 
the  court  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots,  in  1563,  for  which  the 
mother  and  the  father  —  Queen's  apothecary,  but  in  the 
ballad  "highest  Stewart  of  all" — were  hanged.  By  a 
curious  coincidence,  one  Mary  Hamilton,  a  maid  of  honor 
at  Peter  the  Great's  court  in  1718,  was  executed  for  the 
same  offense;  and  this  affair,  of  which  all  the  details  are 
known,  was  at  first  thought  by  Mr.  Child  to  be  the  foun- 
dation of  our  ballad.    Later  ^  he  gave  up  Peter's  Mary 

»  Nos.  178,  196,  199,  197,  173. 

2  See  V,  298  f .  The  fear  that  sailors  may  tell  her  father  and  mother  of 
her  disgrace  and  death  (iii,  383)  seemed  to  make  positively  for  the  Rus- 
sian theory.   But  see  Mr.  A.  Lang  in  Blackwood's  Magazine,  Sept.,  1895. 


240  THE  BALLADS 

Hamilton  as  less  probable  than  the  Queen^s_Mary;  and 
so  all  the  evidence  would  now  seem  to  point.  But  the 
ballad  is  the  main  thing.  Twenty-eight  versions  of  it3re 
extant,  —  a  few  fragmentary,  but  most  of  them  giving  the 
story  in  full;  and  in  all  of  these  the  hand  of  tradition,  not 
of  the  maker  or  copyist  or  improver,  has  been  at  work. 
No  hpillfljj^  poiilH  pffpr  better  pronfjTpJJTete" den py  nfjra- 
ditional  material  toyary  in  all  its  details,  but  to  remain 
steadfast  in  itsstructuraLioxm,  .The  famous  concluding 
stanza  of  the  version  printed  below  is  final  in  only  five 
cases;  three  versions  open  with  it,  and  it  occurs  incident- 
ally in  eleven.  The  color  triad  is  fairly  constant;  but  the 
variations  of  the  seventeenth  stanza  are  worthy  of  note. 
It  makes  the  conclusion  of  one  version: — 

"  Yestreen  I  made  Queen  Mary's  bed, 
Kembed  down  her  yellow  hair ; 
Is  this  the  reward  I  am  to  get, 
To  tread  this  gallows-stair  ?  " 

This  is  expanded  or  varied;  seven  years  she  has  done 
these  things,  or  else  a  stanza  is  very  properly  assigned  to 
each  industry,  bed-making  and  hair-dressing,  while  one 
of  Scott's  copies  more  significantly  ends  thus:  — 

* 

"Aft  hae  I  wash'd  the  king's  bonnie  face, 
Kaim'd  down  his  yellow  hair ; 
And  this  is  a'  the  reward  he's  geen  me, 
The  gallows  to  be  my  share." 

Itis_no  partjof  the  popular  ballad^lpcreate^DX describe 
a  character ;  jeldom  is  there  even  external  description, 
and  then  it  is  only  of  the  conventional  kind.    One  of  the 


MARY  HAMILTON  241 

signs  of  dominant  epic  interest,  and  oltVip  fransfpr  froTn 
tradition  to  edition,  is  the  incipient  characterizalion, 
which  one  notes  in  the  "  Gest  of  Robin  Hood."  Robin  has 
sundry  httle  wayFof  his  own.  He  will  not  dine  until  some 
guest  turns  up,  just  as  xA.rthur,  on  festal  days,  would  not 
break  his  fast  until  an  adventure  occurred.  In  the  higher 
mood  of  character,  Robin  harms  no  woman,  takes  from 
no  poor  man,  is  devoted  to  Our  Lady.  Even  a  heroic 
ballad  like  "Otterburn"  tells  something  of  its  hero 
besides  his  feats;  but  the_ballad_of situation,  in  its  primi-^ 
tive  shape  and  in  its  best  survivals,  essays  nothing  of  the 
kio^  It  is  the  deed,  a  swift  back-and-forth  of  dialogue,  a 
series  of  stanzas  t^accent  its  phase  of  jhesituation,  which 
flash  before  us.  There  is  no  room  for  presenting  character. 
In  "Mary  Hamilton,"  however,  or  in  that  part  of  it  which 
most  struck  popular  fancy,  tradition  developed  something 
very  like  a  "character,"  an  individuality,  which  means 
more  than  a  mere  person  filling  the  mould  of  an  event. 
True,  the  phrases  which  express  this  character  are  them- 
selves traditional,  and  have  drifted  in  on  the  four  winds 
of  balladry;  nothing  is  fixed;  no  effort  at  description  is 
made,  and  even  the  modern  reporter's  inevitable  adjective 
of  beauty  is  absent.  But  the  girl's  loud  defiance,  her  reck- 
less flouting  of  a  weak  king,  her  wild  pledge  melting  into 
tenderness  at  thought  of  home,  her  reproach  for  the  hard 
queen's  ingratitude,  and  the  famous  closing  stanza  with 
its  admirable  reticence  in  pathos,  —  these  things  make 
Mary  Hamilton  suflSciently  individual.  She  has  borne  a 
child,  as  the  ballad  thinks,  tp  Darnley,  "highest  Stewart 


242  THE  BALLADS 

of  a',"  -and  has  thrown  it  into  the  sea  to  sink  or  swim  *  — 
"bonnie  wee  babe"  she  calls  it,  with  faint  memory  of  the 
old  exposure  rite  and  a  mother's  hope  for  rescue;  she 
has  been  detected  by  theauld  queen,  and  bidden  to  ride  to 
Edinburgh  attired  in  black  or  brown.  She  rides  in  white; 
laughs  her  loud  laughters  three  as  she  goes  up  for  trial; 
and  comes  down  the  Canongate  condemned,  while 
many  a  lady  from  window  on  window  weeps  for  Mary's 

fate. 

'"Make  never  meen  2  for  me,'  she  says, 
'Make  never  meen  for  me; 
Seek  never  grace  frae  a  graceless  face. 
For  that  ye  '11  never  see. 

" '  Bring  me  a  bottle  of  wine,'  she  says, 
'  The  best  that  e'er  ye  hae. 
That  I  may  drink  to  my  weil-wishers 
And  they  may  drink  to  me. 

" '  Here  's  a  health  to  the  jolly  sailors 
That  sail  upon  the  main  ; 
Let  them  never  let  on  to  my  father  and  mother 
But  what  I  m  coming  hame. 

" '  Here  's  a  health  to  the  jolly  sailors 
That  sail  upon  the  sea; 
Let  them  never  let  on  to  my  father  and  mother 
That  I  cam  here  to  dee. 

1  SoY,5:  — 

"  '  I  put  it  in  a  bottomless  boat 
And  bade  it  sail  the  sea.' " 

2  "Moan."  This  stanza  is  E,  13;  the  rest  is  A.  That  the  "king's 
face  gives  grace"  is  an  old  saying:  see  Hill's  Boswell,  iii,  121,  note. 
For  riding  along  the  "Cannogate,"  see  a  very  interesting  sketch  of 
Edinburgh  in  1544,  in  Mr.  A.  Lang's  Mystery  of  Mary  Stuart. 


MARY   HAMILTON  243 

"  *  O  little  did  my  mother  think, 
The  day  she  cradled  me. 
What  lands  I  was  to  travel  through. 
What  death  I  was  to  dee. 

" '  O  little  did  my  father  think, 
The  day  he  held  up  me, 
What  lands  I  was  to  travel  through,  . 

What  death  I  was  to  dee. 

"'Last  night  I  wash'd  the  queen's  feet. 
And  gently  laid  her  down ; 
And  a'  the  thanks  I  've  gotten  the  niebt 
To  be  hang'd  in  Edinbro  town ! 

"'Last  nicht  there  was  four  Maries, 
The  nicht  there  '1  be  but  three  ; 
There  was  Marie  Seton,  and  Marie  Beton, 
And  Marie  Carmichael,  and  me.'  " 

We  could  not  part  more  appropriately  from  the  genuine 
ballad  of  tradition,  still  undeveloped  into  epic  breadth, 
than  with  this  fine  version  on  our  lips. 

V.     THE    BORDER   BALLADS 

The  longer  chronicle  ballads  are  mainly  traditional, 
but  they  have  made  good  progress  on  the  epic  road.  Some 
of  them  may  come  down  to  us  as  they  were  composed  by 
the  border  folk  whose  feats  they  celebrate;  but  narrative 
art,  of  whatever  origin,  has  laid  hold  of  them  as  a  class. 
Their  faces  are  set  away  from  the  old  lingering  and  dra- 
matic fashion ;  if  repetition  and  increment  now  and  then 
intrude,  the  intrusion  is  marked.  They  are  not,  like 
"Mary  Hamilton"  and  "Captain  Car,"  sung  and  trans- 
mitted along  with  a  lyric  brevity,  a  lyric  intensity;    but 


244  THE   BALLADS 

they  are  told  at  epic  will  and  in  ample  detail.  To  some 
extent  they  answer  the  call  for  history,  like  old  Germanic 
ballads;  people  listened  to  them,  —  by  invitation  of  the 
reciter  in  his  opening  lines,  and  not  without  a  kind  of 
acknowledgment  of  good  audience  and  due  pious  civilities 
at  the  close.  The  feigned  Canterbury  raconteur  and  the 
actual  reciter  of  a  long  ballad  observed  the  same  sort  of 
etiquette,  even  to  the  prayer:  — 

"  Jhesue  Crist  our  balys  bete,* 
And  to  the  blys  us  brynge ! 
Thus  was  the  hountynge  of  the  Chivyat : 
God  send  us  alle  good  endyng ! " 

The  nun's  priest  ends  his  tale  with  a  similar  prayer;  but 
Sir  Knight  is  more  terse:  — 

"  Thus  endith  Palamon  and  Emelye ; 
And  God  save  al  this  faire  compaignye." 

"God  save  al  the  rowte,"  blurts  out  the  miller.  It  would 
be  interesting  to  know  how  Chaucer  fancied  the  actual 
recitation  of  his  Canterbury  Tales.  His  flexible  coup- 
lets and  his  smooth  stanzas  called  for  something  better 
than  the  chanting  of  a  blind  crowder ;  but  it  would 
be  wide  of  the  mark  if  one  should  assume  for  them  the 
"easy,  conversational  tone"  enjoined  upon  public  readers 
and  orators  of  our  day.  They  were  recited,  doubtless,  as 
very  distinct  verse.  The  "drasty  riming,"  however,  was 
suppressed,  and  metre  was  not  commended  to  the  ear  as 
sing-song.  Long  chronicle  ballads,  too,  must  have  tried 
for  something  of  the  same  epic  freedom  in  recitation; 

1  "Mend  our  ills." 


SINGING   AND  SAYING  245 

while  they  were  bound  to  the  famihar  rhythm,  and  asso- 
ciated with  traditional  tunes,  in  the  majority  of  cases  we 
are  not  to  think  of  them  as  actually  sung.  The  old 
antithesis  of  "sing  or  say"  may  guide  us  in  the  matter; 
originally  both  danced  and  sung,  then  sung  to  a  tradi- 
tional tune  as  narrative  lyrics,  ballads  that  had  passed 
beyond  such  singable  brevity  and  had  struck  into  the  long 
epic  road  were  doubtless  recited  in  a  kind  of  chant  that 
was  rhythmic,  harmonious,  but  without  notes. 

"He  sayed  a  lay,  a  maner  song, 
Withoute  noote,  withoute  song,"  ' 

writes  Chaucer  of  the  knight  who,  with  a  "deadly,  sor- 
rowful sound,"  is  composing  a  complaint;  but  this  is 
lyric.  To  "sing  and  say,"  a  hendiadys  for  telling  a  story 
in  song,  is  a  very  frequent  formula,  but  the  antithetical 
phrase  is  quite  as  old.^  Ballads  of  the  chronicle  type,  we 
may  be  sure,  had  dropped  their  lyric  quality  along  with 
the  repetitions  and  the  refrain;  they  were  not  "sung," 
but  "said."  True,  certain  of  the  border  songs  were  sung 
lustily  enough,  and  at  prodigious  length.  Sidney  speaks 
of  his  blind  crowder  as  singing,  however  rude  the  voice; 
and,  above  all,  we  are  told  that  long  ballads,  even  of  the 
Robin  Hood  order,  were  used  directly  for  the  dance.  But 
versions  change,  and  our  text  of  the  "Cheviot,"  if  that 

1  Identical  rime  indicates  a  difference  in  meaning. 

^  Interesting  in  this  particular  is  Malmesbury's  account  of  Aldhelm's 
amiable  vagaries,  Gesta  Pontificum,  c.  190:  "poesim  Anglicam  posse 
facere,  eadem  apposite  vel  canere  vel  dicere.  .  .  ."  In  Spenser's  Epitha- 
lamium: "  You  that  say  or  sing,"  and  in  G.  Herbert's  Posie :  "  Whether  I 
sing  or  say  or  dictate,"  lies  the  same  antithesis.   Examples  are  endless. 


246  THE  BALLADS 

ballad  is  what  Sidney  heard,  is  almost  certainly  not  the 
text  of  Sidney's  day.  One  feels  that  older  forms  of  a 
chronicle  ballad  must  have  had  twice  the  repetition  and 
half  the  details  which  mark  it  now.  Moreover,  when  a 
ballad  is  named  with  its  dance,  one  cannot  be  sure  that 
it  is  the  ballad  which  we  happen  to  know  under  that  title. 
"The  Complaynt  of  Scotland,"  ^  in  a  famous  passage, 
mentions  a  group  of  shepherds  who  first  tell  tales,  then 
sing  songs  and  ballads,  —  including  the  "Hunttis  of 
Chevet," — and  finally  fall  to  dancing,  with  "Robene 
hude"  and  "Ihonne  Ermistrangis  dance"  among  the 
measures  named.  The  group  and  sequence  have  a  slightly 
artificial  and  literary  look,  like  the  naval  episode  in  the 
same  work;  but  apart  from  this,  apart  even  from  the 
suggestion  that  the  "Robene  hude  "was  only  a  "Chan- 
son de  Robin,"  a  "merrie  and  extemporall  song,"  and 
conceding  that  quite  long  and  lugubrious  poems,  like 
Mannington's  "Lamentation,"  were  used  for  the  dance, 
it  is  clear  that  "Robin  Hood  and  the  Monk"  and  other 
extant  ballads  of  the  sort  had  no  such  office.  They 
appeal  too  directly  to  epic  interest.  Dances  were  com- 
mon at  medieval  funerals,  naturally  to  a  slow  measure; 
the  Lityerses  song  in  Greece  was  a  very  mournful  affair; 
but  the  steady  pace  of  epic,  with  accumulating  interest 
for  its  hearers,  with  lyric  elements  reduced  to  a  mini- 

1  Edited  by  Murray  for  the  Early  English  Text  Soc.,  1872,  pp.  Ixxii, 
63.  In  the  play  of  The  Four  Elements,  Hazlitt-Dodsley,  i,  47,  there  is 
good  fooling  with  description  of  a  dance  where  folk  sing  the  measure  for 
it.  The  "Robin  Hood  in  Barnsdale  stood"  is  probably  a  genuine  first 
line. 


THE    BALLAD    CHANT  247 

mum  and   all  dramatic  activity,  even  the  chorus,  sup- 
pressed, had  long  parted  company  with  the  dance. 

Many  difficulties,  however,  will  be  removed  from  this 
thorny  subject,  if  one  assumes  that  the  paths  of  reciter  and 
singer,  though  separate,  were  not  very  far  apart.  Perhaps 
"chanting"  would  best  describe  the  way  in  which  a 
ballad-singer  or  minstrel  fared  who  minded  his  poetic 
scheme,  and  gave  his  hearers  their  honest  measure  of 
verse;  it  is  likely  that  the  reading  and  the  singing  were 
kept  fairly  close  together  by  an  exact  insistence  upon  the 
rhythmic  plan.  Time  or  rhythm  is  the  main  factor  in  early 
verse;  that  is  what  the  communal  dance  both  begets  and 
requires.  An  abominable  cheerfulness  or  naturalness 
enjoined  by  modern  elocution,  and  a  total  neglect  of  all 
distinction  between  verse  and  prose,  have  put  this  old 
rhythmic  rendering  of  poetry  out  of  date;  but  Tennyson 
used  to  read  aloud  his  own  verses  in  the  despised  sing- 
song, while  Carlyle  swung  a  rapturous  leg  in  time  with  the 
words,  and  muttered  "Alfred's  got  it!"  So  with  Tenny- 
son's peers  of  earlier  date.  Hazlitt,  in  "  Winterslow,"  says 
that  there  is  "a  chaunt  in  the  recitation  both  of  Coleridge 
and  of  Wordsworth  which  acts  as  a  spell  upon  the  hearer." 
Who,  above  all,  would  not  have  heard  Scott  himself, 
quickening  his  tired  heart  in  the  evil  days,  as  he  "chanted 
rather  than  repeated"  his  favorite  version  of  "Otter- 
burn?"^  Making  prose  out  of  verse,  we  may  be  sure, 
ia^a  modern  accomplishment;  and  rhythm  was  once  an 
inviolable  fact  in  poetry,  whether  recited  or  sung.  Mr. 
1  See  the  details  in  Lockhart's  Li]e  under  July,  1831. 


248  THE   BALLADS 

Thomas  Hardy  is  good  authority  for  the  ways  of  the 
Wessex  peasant;  and  the  aged  Wessex  peasant  of  forty 
years  ago,  when  he  sang  a  ballad,  had  four  centuries  of 
the  habit  behind  him.  There  is  much  to  be  learned  from 
Grandfer  Cantle's  eccentric  performance  on  Blackbar- 
row;  ^  the  "sing,"  the  "say,"  and  something  of  choral 
reminiscence  are  all  there.  "With  his  stick  in  his  hand, 
he  began  to  jig  a  private  minuet  .  .  .  also  began  to  sing, 
in  the  voice  of  a  bee  up  a  flue :  — ^ 

"The  king'  call'd  down'  his  no'-bles  all', 
By  one',  by  two',  by  three'; 
Earl  Mar'-shal,  I'll'  go  shrive'  the  queen', 
And  thou'  shalt  wend'  with  me'." 

When  old  folk  tried  to  recite  a  ballad  to  the  collectors 
without  this  stay  in  a  monotonous  rhythmic  chant,  they 
often  made  sad  work  of  it,  and  much  disorder  resulted 
in  the  copy.  For  example,  a  version  of  "The  Wife  of 
Usher's  Well,"  taken  down  from  the  dictation  of  an  aged 
fisherman  in  1883,  is  badly  damaged  as  verse.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  to  that  chanting  vigor  of  recitation,  in  a 
style  very  close  to  singing,  that  we  owe  the  almost  uniform 
perfection  of  rhythm  in  our  old  ballads,  short  or  long. 
We  may  begin  our  study  of  the  longer  pieces  ^  with 

^  See  The  Return  of  the  Native,  chap.  iii. 

2  See,  for  the  following,  nos.  184,  185,  192,  186,  187,  188,  189 ;  also 
190,  191,  193.  In  studying  the  border  ballads,  we  must  remember  the 
equality  of  all  members  of  a  Scottish  clan,  homogeneous  conditions 
beyond  dispute,  and  bear  in  mind,  as  Mr.  Lang  says,  that  "fidelity  to  a 
chief  was  more  imjx)rtant  than  fidelity  to  king,  country,  and  the  funda- 
mental laws  of  morality." 


THE    LADS   OF    WAMPHRAY  249 

"The  Lads  of  Wamphray,"  an  old  ballad  based  on  the 
hanging  of  a  freebooter  about  the  year  1593,  and  the  ven- 
geance taken  by  his  nephew.  It  is  in  the  two-line  stanza, 
—  Scott's  "Minstrelsy"  prints  it  wrongly,  —  was  surely 
sung  though  we  have  no  refrain  with  it,  and  is  full  of  re- 
petitions and  lively  quotation :  — 

"  O  Simmy,  Simmy,  now  let  me  gang. 
And  I  vow  I  '11  neer  do  a  Crichton  wrang. 

"  O  Simmy,  Simmy,  now  let  me  be, 
And  a  peck  o'  goud  I  Ml  gie  to  thee. 

"  O  Simmy,  Simmy,  let  me  gang. 
And  my  wife  shall  heap  it  wi'  her  hand." 

It  differs,  however,  from  the  mass  of  ballads  which  were 
founded  on  deeds  of  the  border,  on  feud,  murder,  burn- 
ings, in  its  fresh  and  immediate  tone.  It  seems  to  spring 
straight  from  the  fact;  and  one  is  tempted  here,  if  any- 
where, to  apply  Bishop  Leslie's  ipsi  confingunt,  and  to 
charge  the  making  of  the  ballad  to  the  very  doers  of  its 
deed  of  revenge.  It  is  certainly  not  made  at  long  range. 
There  is  no  epic  detail,  and  even  the  opening  eight 
stanzas  may  be  an  afterthought.  One  takes  seriously 
enough  the  story  of  Cnut's  improvisation  on  the  waters 
by  Ely,  the  chorus  of  nobles  and  attendants,  and  the 
resulting  song  of  battle  and  conquest,  —  or,  rather,  one 
accepts  the  picture  as  true  while  doubting  the  authenti- 
city of  the  fragment;  change  these  persons  and  conditions 
to  the  chief  of  some  lawless  house,  surrounded  by  his 
retainers,  singing  a  humbler  theme  with  ampler  tradi- 


250  THE  BALLADS 

tional  store  of  word  and  phrase,  and  the  making  of  border 
ballads  by  men-at-arms  in  improvisation  and  choral 
becomes  a  quite  intelligible  fact.  Between  this  first  rude 
song  and  the  recorded  ballad,  as  some  collector  took  it 
from  the  last  of  a  long  series  of  traditional  versions,  there 
are  innumerable  chances  of  popular  and  local  varia- 
tion, and  of  the  "improvements"  due  to  some  vagrom 
bard. 

Another  border  ballad,  popular  in  England  and  cited 
by  Tom  Nashe  himself,  is  "Dick  o'  the  Cow."  ^  Here  is 
far  more  detail;  it  is  a  good  story  told  in  high  spirits 
throughout.  Dick  is  a  fool,  a  Cumberland  yokel;  but  for 
his  stolen  cattle  and  his  wife's  stolen  coverlets  he  gets 
fine  return,  and  withal  fells  an  Armstrong  in  fair  fight. 
No  wonder  that  lusty  folk  everywhere  liked  this  ballad. 
"The  Lochmaben  Harper,"  to  be  sure,  may  make  a 
stronger  bid  for  patriotism;  but  the  stealing  of  English 
King  Henry's  horse  by  a  silly,  blind  Scots  harper  has  a 
calculated  jocosity  which  leaves  it  far  behind  "Dick  o' 
the  Cow."  The  latter,  as  its  burden  shows,  was  sung; 
and  if  it  is  over  long  for  lyric  purposes,  its  sometime 
singers  would  doubtless  remark  that  there  can  never  be 
too  much  of  a  good  thing.  Incremental  repetition  has  left 
plain  traces  here  and  there;  but  one  notes  the  far  more 
prominent  characteristic  of  repeating  two  concluding 
lines  of  a  stanza  as  beginning  of  the  next,  —  a  common 
feature  in  ballads  of  the  epic  sort.    Other  narrative  traits 

*  Cow  "may  possibly  mean  the  hut  in  which  he  lived;  or  brush,  or 
broom."  —  Child. 


KINMONT  WILLIE  251 

abound.  Quotation  is  indicated,  and  not,  as  in  "The  Lads 
of  Wamphray,"  sprung  without  notice:  — 

"Then  Johne  Armstrang  to  Willie  can  say, 
'Billie,  a-rideing  then  will  we.'  "  ' 

In  "Kinmont  Willie,"  of  which  a  very  generous  portion 
must  be  placed  to  the  credit  of  Scott,  so  much,  indeed,  as 
to  make  it  almost  an  imitated  ballad,  the  first-person 
plural  imparts  a  confidential  tone,  but  fails  to  achieve 
the  immediate  effect  of  the  other  pieces;  one  seems  to  be 
reading  something  like  a  dramatic  lyric  of  Browning, 
with  mosstroopers  instead  of  the  old  cavalier  and  without 
"my  boy  George,"  but  all  done  to  the  life.  Next,  "in  de- 
ference to  history,"  comes  what  may  be  a  free  version  of 
Kinmont  Willie's  story,  "Jock  o'  the  Side,"  which  Pro- 
fessor Child  calls  one  of  the  best  ballads  in  the  world,  and 
"enough  to  make  a  mosstrooper  of  any  young  borderer, 
had  he  lacked  the  impulse."  Jock  is  set  free  from  New- 
castle, Hobby  Noble  leading  the  small  party  of  rescue,  just 
as  Willie  was  set  free  from  Carlisle;  the  ballad  stirs  one's 
pulses  with  its  opening  line,  and  all  is  life  and  movement 
to  the  end.  "Archie  o'  Cawfield,"  almost  a  repetition  of 
"Jock,"  tells  the  same  tale  of  rescue,  two  brothers  here 
risking  life  and  limb  for  a  third ;  the  device  of  reversing  the 
horses'  shoes  is  mentioned,  and  the  recurring  verses:  — 

"There  was  horsing,  horsing  of  haste, 

And  cracking  o'  whips  out  o'er  the  lee," 

put  a  fine  breeze  about  one's  ears  as  one  reads.    One  of 
^  Can  =  gan,  —  simply  "did."  — 


252  THE  BALLADS 

the  brothers  says  the  night's  work  has  cost  him  his  land; 
the  answer  is  prompt :  — 

" '  Now  wae  light  o'  thee  and  thy  lands  baith,  Jock, 
And  even  so  baith  the  land  and  thee ! 
For  gear  will  come  and  gear  will  gang. 
But  three  brothers  again  we  were  never  to  be  !  '" 

In  "Hobie  Noble,"  finally,  we  learn  how  that  hero  of  the 
rescue  in  "Jock  o'  the  Side"  is  betrayed  into  the  hands 
of  the  English  and  taken  to  Carlisle.  Two  stanzas  give 
his  Good-Night  and  his  loathing  of  betrayal;  while  the 
singer  concludes,  — 

"  'I'd  rather  be  ca'd  Hobie  Noble 

In  Carlisle,  where  he  suffers  for  his  faut,  • 

Before  I  were  ca'd  traitor  Mains 

That  eats  and  drinks  of  meal  and  maut.'  " 

"Jamie  Telfer  of  the  Fair  Dodhead,"  ^  as  printed  in  the 
"Minstrelsy,"  was  "improved"  by  Scott;  it  is  a  story 
of  cattle-lifting,  revenge,  and  reprisal,  and  is  somewhat 
inferior  to  the  preceding  ballads.  "Hughie  Grame," 
accused  of  stealing  the  lord  bishop's  mare,  is  hanged 
for  the  theft  —  unjustly,  the  ballad  thinks,  and  the 
ballad  may  be  right.  It  has  no  other  claim  upon  the 
reader.    "The  Death  of  Parcy  Reed"  tells  of  the  laird's 

'  It  should  be  "in"  the  Dodhead,  as  Jamie  was  only  tenant ;  "of" 
would  make  him  proprietor.  —  Child,  v,  249.  The  version  lately 
recovered  by  Mr.  Macmath  shows  that  Scott  is  responsible,  as  was 
guessed,  for  the  simile  — 

"  The  Dinlay  snaw  was  neer  mair  white 
Nor  the  lyart  locks  of  Harden's  hair," 

and  other  additions  in  describing  the  fight. 


BALLADS  OF   BATTLE  253 

treacherous  murder;  it  is  full  of  incremental  repetition, 
has  a  "farewell"  already  cited,  and  in  one  version  was 
"taken  down  from  the  chanting  of  an  old  woman"  in 
Northumberland.  The  story,  to  be  dated  perhaps  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  still  lives  in  local  tradition.  When  his 
three  supposed  friends  leave  him  practically  defenseless 
to  meet  the  troop  that  besets  him,  he  offers  the  first  his 
good  steed,  the  second  a  yoke  of  oxen,  the  third  his  daugh- 
ter Jean,  if  they  will  stay  and  back  him:  and  all  in  vain. 
Passins;  to  the  ballads  of  battle,*  we  find  in  most  of 
them  the  traces  of  a  minstrel  and  even  the  shadow  of  a 
printed  book.  We  should  feel  more  surprise  that  no  great 
ballad  came  from  the  long  and  glorious  struggle  of  the 
covenanters,  if  we  did  not  remember  a  dozen  other  disap- 
pointments of  this  sort,  including  the  late  civil  war  in 
America  and  the  futility  of  nearly  all  its  verse.  One  is 
tempted  to  say  that  it  has  always  been  the  small  fights 
which  made  great  poetry.  Moreover,  tradition  herself 
is  sometimes  unable  to  preserve  her  children  from  indig- 
nities and  absurdities;  and  parody,  burlesque,  incom- 
petence, have  spoiled  many  a  fine  original  in  the  process 
of  oral  transmission.  "The  Battle  of  Harlaw"  is  a  ballad 
mentioned  as  far  back  as  "The  Complaynt  of  Scotland;" 
it  celebrated  the  victory  won  in  1411  by  Lowlanders 
against  an  invading  Lord  of  the  Isles.  This  seems  to  have 
been  lost;  but  a  ballad  on  the  same  fight  was  "obtained 
from  the  country  people"  near  Aberdeen.  In  spite  of 
some  obvious  corruptions,  it  rings  well,  especially  in  the 
1  See  nos.  163,  206,  205,  202,  198. 


254  THE  BALLADS 

last  stanza;   the  tune,  moreover,  is  said  to  be  "wild  and 

simple."  — 

"  Gin  ony  body  speer  at  you 
For  them  ye  took  awa'. 
Ye  may  tell  their  wives  and  baimies 
They're  sleepin'  at  Harlaw." 

Professor  Neilson  points  out  the  use  of  the  Highland 
dialect  in  this  ballad  both  for  characterization  and  for 
comic  effect;  it  is  a  conglomerate  of  chronicle,  pathos, 
and  humor. 

The  covenanters,  it  has  been  said,  do  little  for  balladry; 
another  sort  of  poem  has  found  adequate  expression  for 
hearts  that  beat  more  fast  over  the  graves  of  the  martyrs. 
"Bothwell  Bridge"  has  been  quoted  already  for  Earl- 
stoun's  good-night.  "Loudon  Hill"  savors  of  a  rude  and 
untunef ul  bard ;  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  "The  Battle 
of  Philiphaugh,"  though  both  are  traditional  ballads.  A 
little  repetition,  a  touch  of  the  picturesque,  fail  to  redeem 
"Bonny  John  Seton"  from  mediocrity  or  worse.  These 
ail  form  an  easy  bridge  by  which  one  crosses  to  the 
thorough-paced  minstrel  ballad  and  the  piece  which 
invokes  printed  or  written  authority.  "Gude  Wallace"  ^ 
comes,  in  no  long  journey,  from  the  poem  attributed  to 
Blind  Harry;  but  its  patriotic  tone  and  the  discomfiture 
of  the  English  captain  would  make  it  popular  and  remem- 
bered. Of  the  actual  battle-pieces,  "Flodden  Field," 
preserved  by  Deloney,^  is  the  shortest  and  most  tradi- 
tional in  tone;  "the  commons  of  England  made  this  song," 

1  No.  157. 

^  See  above,  p.  12,  and  nos.  168.  159,  172,  174,  175,  176,  177. 


BALLADS  OF   BATTLE  255 

he  says,  "which  to  this  day  is  not  forgotten  of  many."  It 
has  been  touched  a  httle,  one  infers,  and  shortened  here 
and  there,  more  in  repetitions  than  in  the  story;  its  main 
defect  is  that  one  fails  to  find  the  root  of  the  matter  in  it ; 
not  the  ballad,  but  its  subject  gave  it  vogue.  "Durham 
Field,"  with  sixty-six  stanzas,  has  a  minstrel  or  humble 
poet  behind  it;  he  is  chronological  in  noting  that  Durham, 
Crecy,  and  Poitiers  were  all  fought  within  one  month, 
and  he  is  interesting  in  telling  us  that 

"There  was  welthe  and  welfare  in  mery  England, 
Solaces,  game  and  glee, 
And  every  man  loved  other  well 

And  the  king  loved  good  yeomanrie." 

Another  minstrel  sings  "Musselburgh  Field"  in  the  same 
vein,  but  the  ballad  is  a  fragment.  "Earl  Bothwell "  tells 
of  Riccio's  and  Darnley's  death.  "The  Rising  in  the 
North,"  "Northumberland  Betrayed  by  Douglas,"  and 
"The  Earl  of  Westmoreland"  are  chronicle  ballads  com- 
posed by  this  or  that  minstrel;  the  third  of  these  has  a 
curious  addition  of  what  Child  calls  "  imitation  of  stale 
old  romance"  and  Professor  Schofield  suspects  it  to  be 
drawn  from  "Libeaus  Desconus:"  we  start  out  with 
Nevilles  and  old  Master  Norton,  and  end  by  cutting  off 
the  soldan's  head. 

So  closes  the  unrefreshing  catalogue,  save  for  two 
ballads  which  rise  from  these  arid  foothills  like  peaks  of 
the  Sierras:    "Otterburn"  ^  and  the  "Cheviot."     It  is 

'  No.  161.  There  is  even  here  a  background  of  learned  information. 
"  The  chronicle  will  not  lie,"  says  stanza  35  ;  and  the  same  appeal  to 
authority  is  found  in  so  artificial  a  ballad  as  The  Rose  of  England. 


256  THE  BALLADS 

uncertain  which  of  them  Sidney  had  in  mind  when  he 
praised  "the  old  song  of  Percy  and  Douglas;"  but,  as 
Professor  Child  remarks,  while  the  quality  of  "  Otterburn  " 
amply  deserves  such  praise,  the  quality  of  "Cheviot" 
deserves  it  better,  and  for  that,  and  no  other  reason,  one 
assumes  the  latter  ballad.  If  guessing  is  allowed,  one 
may  go  straight  to  the  passage  which  breathes  a  spirit 
as  noble  as  Sidney's  own  knighthood,  and  must  have 
delighted  his  soul.  Douglas  and  Percy  have  been  fight- 
ing manfully;  an  arrow  comes  flying  along  and  strikes 
Douglas  "in  at  the  breast-bone:"  — 


'&* 


"  Thorowe  lyvar  and  longes  bathe 

the  sharpe  arrowe  ys  gane. 
That  neuer  after  in  all  his  lyflFe-days 

he  spayke  mo  wordes  but  ane  : 
That  was,  '  Fyghte  ye,  my  myrry  men,  whyllys  ye  may, 

for  my  lyff-days  ben  gan.' 

"  The  Perse  leanyde  on  his  brande, 
and  sawe  the  Duglas  de ; 
He  took  the  dede  mane  by  the  hande, 
and  sayd,  '  Wo  ys  me  for  the  ! 

" '  To  haue  savyde  thy  lyffe,  I  wolde  haue  partyde  with 
my  landes  for  years  thre, 
For  a  better  man,  of  hart  nare  of  hande, 
Was  nat  in  all  the  north  contre.' " 

So  the  older  version,  which  is  called  the  "Hunting  of  the 
Cheviot."  The  younger  and  inferior  version,  "Chevy 
Chase,"  —  the  only  one  known  to  Addison  when  he  ap- 
preciated it  so  highly  in  the  "Spectator,"  calling  it  the 


CHEVY   CHASE  257 

favorite  ballad  of  the  English  people  *  and  asserting  it 
to  have  been  the  object  of  extravagant  admiration  on 
the  part  of  Ben  Jonson,  —  runs  thus:  — 

"  With  that  there  came  an  arrow  keene 
out  of  an  English  bow, 
Which  stroke  Erie  Douglas  on  the  brest 
a  deepe  and  deadlye  blow. 

"Who  never  said  more  words  than  these: 
'  Fight  on,  my  merry  men  all ! 
For  why,  my  life  is  at  an  end, 
lord  Pearcy  sees  my  fall.' 

"Then  leaving  liffe,  Erie  Pearcy  tooke 
the  dead  man  by  the  hand ; 
Who  said  :   '  Erie  Dowglas,  for  thy  life 
wold  I  had  lost  my  land  I 

" '  O  Christ !   my  verry  hart  doth  bleed 
for  sorrow  for  thy  sake. 
For  sure,  a  more  redoubted  knight 
mischance  cold  never  take.'  " 

This  version,  "written  over  for  the  broadside  press," 
still  good  in  spite  of  the  hurdy-gurdy  tone,  need  not  be 
considered  further.  "Otterburn,"  however,  "tran- 
scendently  heroic  ballad"  as  Mr.  Child  calls  it,  though 
less  concentrated  in  effect,  though  it  has  neither  dying 
speech  nor  victor's  eulogy,  and  though  patch-verses  occur 
like  "I  tell  you  in  certayne,"  must  be  placed  beside  the 

1  "You  will  not  maintain  that  Chevy  Chase  is  a  finer  poem  than 
Paradise  Lost  ?"  —  "I  do  not  know  what  you  mean  by  a  fine  poem;  but 
I  will  maintain  that  it  gives  a  much  deeper  insight  into  the  truth  of 
things."  "I  do  not  know  what  you  mean  by  the  truth  of  things."  — 
T.  L.  Peacock's  Melincourt,  chap.  ix. 


258  THE   BALLADS 

"Cheviot."  The  chivalry  hes  here  in  facts.  Besieged 
Percy  defies  invading  Douglas  over  the  walls  of  New- 
castle, and  makes  a  tryst  to  fight  with  him;  then  sends 
him  a  pipe  of  wine  that  he  and  his  host  may  drink.  On 
the  next  day,  as  battle  is  preparing,  letters  come  to  Percy 
bidding  him  delay  until  his  father  shall  arrive.  "  Wend 
again  to  my  lord,"  says  Percy,  in  Nelson's  vein,  "and  say 
you  saw  me  not.  My  troth  is  pledged,  and  no  Scot  shall 
call  me  coward.  So,  archers,  shoot,  and  minstrels,  play; 
every  man  think  on  his  true-love  and  cross  himself  in  the 
Trinity's  name:  I  make  my  vow  to  God  this  day  will 
I  not  flee! "  Then  high  floats  the  Douglas  standard,  with 
its  bleeding  heart,  high  the  white  lion  and  crescent  of  the 
Percy;  "  St.  Andrew!  "  loud  shouted  there, "  St.  George  ! " 
here;  and  the  fight  is  on.  "Otterburn"  should  stir  any 
man's  blood.  We  heed  only  the  English  ballad ;  there  are 
two  inferior  Scottish  versions,  with  a  famous  stanza,  — 

" '  But  I  have  seen  a  dreary  dream, 
Beyond  the  isle  o'  Sky; 
I  saw  a  dead  man  won  the  fight. 
And  I  think  that  man  was  I,'"  — 

which  Mr.  Child  refuses  to  accept  as  traditional.  Inferior 
as  they  are,  and  in  part  "suspicious,"  they  have  a  popular, 
traditional  tone  and  lack  the  broadside  twang  of  "Chevy 
Chase"  in  its  younger  form. 

How  shall  one  account  for  these  two  fine  ballads  of 
"Otterburn"  and  the  "Cheviot".?  Where  are  they  to 
be  placed  ?    Assuming,  in  spite  of  Mr.  J.  W.  Hales,*  that 

'  In  a  paper  in  his  Folia  Litteraria.    The  battle  was  fought  August 


THE  BATTLE  OF  OTTERBURN      259 

they  describe  the  same  actual  fight,  we  have  only  to  read 
Froissart's  story  of  it  to  understand  the  fine  note  of 
chivalry  that  rings  through  their  rough  stanzas.  It  is  the 
chivalry  and  the  sentiment  of  men-at-arms,  if  not  of  lofty 
knighthood  itself,  rather  than  the  work  of  a  professional 
song-writer  like  Laurence  Minot,  who  was  almost  a  con- 
temporary of  these  warriors  and  wrote  exultant  verses 
on  the  wars  of  Edward  III,  pouring  out  impetuous  scorn 
upon  the  foe.^  It  is  far  removed,  too,  from  the  simple  and 
rural  conception  of  things  such  as  one  can  find  in  ordinary 
traditional  ballads  or  even  in  battle-pieces  made  "by  the 
commons."  It  is  the  spirit  characteristic  of  fourteenth- 
century  Englishmen  at  their  best,  as  history  records  it  in 
Edward  III  with  his  sacred  word  of  honor  ^  and  his  gen- 
erosity to  the  captive,  as  Chaucer  embodies  it  in  his 
knight  and  his  squire,  and  as  Shakespeare,  with  amazing 
sympathy,  has  fixed  it  in  his  Hotspur,  the  Percy  of  these 
ballads.  Who  knows,  by  the  way,  what  the  ballads  may 
not  have  done  for  Shakespeare's  study  of  this  favorite, 
who,  by  the  sneer  of  the  rival,  would  "  ride  up  a  hill  per- 

19,  1388.  The  English  version  of  Otterhurn  "is  likely  to  have  been 
modernized  from  a  ballad  current  as  early  as  1400,"  and  is  closer  to  the 
facts.  The  Cheviot,  though  older  in  its  linguistic  forms,  is  more  remote 
in  information  r  it  turns  the  tryst  of  battle  in  England  into  a  defiant 
deer-hunt  in  Scotland.  The  spirit  of  the  piece,  however,  is  quite  con- 
temporary with  the  fight.  In  form  it  has  probably  been  submitted  to 
many  changes. 

'  See  above,  p.  55. 

^  This  sentiment  was  not  confined  to  England.  The  old  French  king, 
when  his  son  escaped  from  Edward,  felt  bound  to  go  of  his  own  will  over 
channel  and  take  the  hostage's  place  in  captivity. 


260  THE  BALLADS 

pendicular,"  and  by  his  own  account  would  follow  honor 
beyond  mortal  bounds  ?  The  noble  speech  before  Shrews- 
bury fight,  — 

"  '  O  gentlemen,  the  time  of  life  is  short,' "  — 

is  a  kind  of  summary  of  Percy's  character  as  the  ballad- 
makers  saw  it.^ 

Judging  them,  then,  by  their  tone,  these  ballads  spring 
originally  from  fighting  men  of  the  better  sort,  and  sug- 
gest the  old  songs  of  warriors  by  warriors  and  for  warriors 
which  one  guesses  in  the  background  of  epic.  Precisely, 
too,  as  the  nobler  sort  of  rhapsode  or  professional  poet 
worked  old  improvisations  into  epic  shape  without 
impairing  their  note  of  simple  and  hardy  courage,  so  a 
border  minstrel  of  whatever  time  has  surely  laid  his  hand 
upon  the  original  form  of  these  stirring  verses.  They  are 
still  popular,  still  traditional,  but  not  in  the  sense  that 
" Mary  Hamilton  "  and  "Captain  Car"  and  the  Scottish 
versions  of  "Otterburn"  itself  are  traditional  and  popu- 
lar. They  are  epic  in  their  appeal,  particularly  in  their 
habit  of  singling  out  this  or  that  hero  and  naming  him  for 
especial  praise,  a  method  which  is  often  called  Homeric 
and  which  is  particularly  effective  in  the  best  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  battle-lays,  "The  Fight  at  Maldon."  Richard 
Witherington,  squire  of  Northumberland,  is  a  worthy 
successor  to  those  heroes  of  East  Anglia,  the  leader 
Byrhtnoth,    MUere,   Maccus,  Wulfmser,   and    the    rest, 

^  So  far  is  this  sentiment  to  the  fore  that  Hume  of  Godscroft  (see 
Child,  iii,  303)  calls  the  Cheviot  "  a  meer  fiction,  perhaps  to  stirre  up 
vertue." 


ARTISTIC  TOUCHES  261 

immortal  all.  Our  two  ballads  are  matched  in  this  re- 
spect, moreover,  by  songs  which  are  not  of  so  traditional 
a  cast.  A  very  interesting  song  on  the  Battle  of  Agin- 
court,^  printed  by  Wright  in  the  second  volume  of  his 
"Political  Poems,"  "is  preserved  in  ...  an  early  chron- 
icle of  London,  the  writer  of  which  was  taking  his  narra- 
tive from  the  account  given  in  the  popular  ballad,  until, 
tired  of  paraphrasing  it,  he  went  on  copying  the  song 
itself."  In  its  praise  of  the  individual  warriors,  it  runs 
parallel  with  "Otterburn"  and  the  "Cheviot;"  but  this 
is  not  all.  These  ballads  break  away  in  several  instances 
from  the  common  metre  and  ordinary  stanza;  the  same 
rime  often  connects  two  or  more  stanzas;  and  Professor 
Skeat  thinks  that  the  whole  of  the  "  Cheviot  "•  was  meant 
to  run  in  eight-line  stanzas,  —  as  Child  prints  it,  —  and 
that  either  the  task  was  too  hard  or  our  copy  is  badly 
damaged.  Now  "Agincourt"  is  in  interlaced  eight-line 
stanzas,  of  the  ballade  order,  with  a  refrain;  and  Wright's 
second  volume,  just  cited,  contains  a  number  of  poems  of 
this  general  form,  all  on  popular  subjects  and  tending 
to  "journalism"  of  the  better  class.  Such,  for  example, 
is  the  "  Lamentacioun  of  the  Duchess  of  Glossester,"  re- 
ported in  the  first  person  by  one  who  "passed  through  a 
palace"  and  heard  her  moan.   "All  women  may  be  ware 

1  The  other  song  For  the  Victory  at  Agincourt,  which  Percy  printed 
from  a  MS.  which  also  contained  the  music,  has  a  Latin  refrain.  Percy 
notes  that  "  although  Henry  '  had  forbidden  the  minstrels  to  celebrate  his 
victory,'  he  was  a  patron  of  the  'order,'  and  both  of  his  biographers  men- 
tion his  love  of  music."  Wright  says  that  this  song  "carried  the  tidings 
of  the  victory  . .  .  through  the  towns  and  villages  of  England." 


262  THE  BALLADS 

by  me,"  is  unlucky  Eleanor's  refrain;  and  there  is,  of 
course,  no  refrain  line  in  our  ballads.  But  the  general 
resemblance  is  clear.  Striking  is  the  tendency  to  ex- 
cessive alliteration,  not  found  in  the  normal  traditional 
ballad  in  such  riotous  force,  but  breaking  out  here  and 
there  in  our  two  border  pieces  so  as  to  match  the  con- 
sistent habit  of  songs  like  "Agincourt,"  with  its  — 

"  Stedes  ther  stumbelyd  in  that  stownde, 
That  stod  stere  stuffed  under  stele." 

Instead  of  the  modest  "dale  and  down"  or  "green  as 
grass"  of  balladry,  we  have  in  "Otterburn"  "styffely 
in  stowre  can  stand;"  while  Percy's  tryst  is  described 
as  a  place  where  — 

"The  roo  full  rekeles  ther  sche  rinnes 
To  make  the  game  and  glee; 
The  fawken  and  the  fesaunt  both 
Among  the  holtes  on  hye." 

Douglas  is  painted  finely  in  the  "Cheviot,"  by  good  help 
of  "hunting  the  letter:"  — 

"  His  armor  glytteryde  as  did  a  glede, 
a  bolder  barne  was  never  born." 

These  are  marks  of  the  poet,  and  are  in  line  with  the 
characteristics  of  middle-English  lyric  in  its  mingling  of 
popular  and  artistic  elements.  Not  that  the  humble 
ballad-singer,  Richard  Sheale,  who  signs  the  copy  of  the 
"Cheviot"  which  he  had  probably  learned  by  ear  and 
either  dictated  to  a  poor  scribe  or  set  down  in  his  own 
blundering  hand,  made  any  line  of  the  poem.  He  copied 
it  as  part  of  his  stock,  just  as  a  more  prosperous  man. 


COMPOSER  AND   COPYIST  263 

years  before,  set  down  favorite  songs  in  a  commonplace 
book  and  signed,  for  example,  "The  Nut-Brown  Maid" 
with  his  own  name:  "explicit  quod  Ric.  Hill."  So  the 
Tamworth  minstrel  wrote  "expliceth,  quod  Rychard 
Sheale."  That  should  disturb  nobody.  Nor  should  the 
minstrel's  rendering  of  a  transition  stanza:  "The  first  fit 
here  I  end ;  if  you  want  any  more  of  this  Cheviot  song, 
more  is  coming."  Not  even  that  is  Sheale's  affair.  Heusler 
notes  that  remote  Faroe  ballads  have  such  a  division 
with  such  an  announcement:  "here  the  first  ^t  ends,"  or 
"here  we  will  begin  our  second  fit ;"  and  it  is  common 
in  medieval  tales.  Finally,  the  imperfect  metre  is  precisely 
what  one  should  expect  from  an  illiterate  copyist.  Ballads 
sung  in  good  rhythm  are  always  in  good  metre,  and  in 
this  respect  not  inferior,  as  Mr.  Child  once  wrote  in  a 
private  letter,  to  "any  Pindaric  ode  by  Gray  or  whom- 
ever else."  An  ignorant  man  sings  or  recites  good  rhythm, 
he  cannot  write  or  dictate  it;  just  so  children  invariably 
observe  rigorously  good  rhythm  in  saying  verse,  and 
will  "make  up"  a  good  fine  or  so.  Let  them  take  pencil 
and  paper,  try  to  compose  and  set  down  their  lines,  and 
the  result  is  sad  limping  stuff. 

It  is  clear,  then,  that  these  two  great  ballads  spring 
from  no  simple  countryside  memory.  We  hear,  as  in 
Froissart,  the  cry  of  heartening  or  of  defiance,  and,  as 
in  'Maldon,"  the  crash  of  weapons  and  din  of  actual 
fight.  Contrast  with  this  the  movement  and  detail  of  the 
"Baron  of  Brackley;"  there  the  persons  are  named 
but  incidentally;    everybody  knows  them,  and  they  are 


264  THE  BALLADS 

neither  introduced  nor  described.  The  action  begins  at 
once.  Here,  though  we  are  deahng  with  such  a  prominent 
man  as  Harry  Percy,  the  epic  instinct  asserts  itself  in  Hues 
of  introduction  or  detail :  — 

"  He  had  byn  a  march-man  all  hys  dayes 
And  kepte  Barwyke  upon  Twede." 

The  route  of  the  invaders  is  carefully  given,  their  num- 
bers, —  with  appeal  to  "the  chronicle,"  —  and  the  exact 
time  of  year  by  rural  calendar;  ^  whereas 

"  Inverey  cam  doun  Deeside  whistlin'  and  playin'. 
He  was  at  brave  Braikley's  yett  ere  it  was  dawin'," 

is  the  incipient  chronicle  style,  still  communal  in  manner 
and  form.  Moreover  in  "Otterburn"  and  the  "  Cheviot" 
comment  of  the  narrator  is  heard:  "the  child  may  rue 
that  is  unborn,"  for  the  general,  and  for  the  particular  — 

"  It  was  a  he%'y  syght  to  se 

bright  swordes  on  basnites  lyght." 

Most  striking  is  the  absence  of  ballad  commonplaces, 
matching  the  deviation  from  ballad  structure.  In  the  Scot- 
tish popular  fragment  of  "  Otterburn,"  three  stanzas  are 
taken  from  the  chronicle  ballad;  and  then  enters  a  bonny 
boy,  of  the  regular  breed,  with  his  news,  and  as  inevitably 
he  is  told  that  if  this   be  true  he  shall  have  the  best, 

*  In  the  Cheviot  there  is  a  kind  of  antiquarian  appeal,  already  quoted : 

"  Old  men  that  knowen  the  growende  well  yenoughe, 
Call  it  the  battell  of  Otterburn." 

This  version  is  therefore  a  strictly  local  redaction  of  the  familiar  chron- 
icle ballad  material. 


CHRONICLE    BALLADS  265 

if  false  he  may  look  to  be  hanged ;  whereupon  he  takes 
out  "his  "little  penknife"  from  its  right  ballad  place  and 
gives  Earl  Douglas  "a  deep  wound  and  a  sare," — which 
is  the  popular  and  traditional  expression  of  a  belief 
that  Douglas  was  not  killed  by  the  enemy,  but  by  a  re- 
vengeful groom  of  his  chamber  whom  he  had  struck 
the  day  before  and  who  left  part  of  his  master's  armor 
unfastened  behind  so  as  to  strike  him  down  in  the  heat 
of  battle.^  In  the  chronicle  ballad,  however,  not  a  hint  of 
any  commonplace  of  typical  situation  ballads  can  be 
found. 

For  these  two  are  chronicle  ballads,  —  with  emphasis 
on  the  chronicle.  The  fight  of  Otterburn  was  surely  sung 
on  both  sides  of  the  border,  in  hall,  bower,  and  cottage, 
by  the  roadside  and  at  the  dance;  but  what  we  have  in 
the  two  splendid  poems  about  it  seems  to  come  to  us,  in 
stuff  and  spirit,  from  men-at-arms, —  who,  as  the  bishop 
testifies,  could  make  and  sing  their  ballads  readily 
enough,  —  with  more  or  less  editing,  recasting,  and  fresh 
phrasing,  by  minstrels  of  varying  degree,  upon  the  way. 
That  way  was  not  very  long;  both  ballads  are  in  manu- 
script of  the  sixteenth  century.  They  are  ballads  of  fight, 
traditional,  but  not  popular  in  the  normal  sense  of  the 
word.  There  is  nothing  choral  or  concerted  or  dramatic 
in  them;  they  seem  to  have  been  epic  from  the  start. 
But  it  is  useless  to  speculate  on  their  far-off  and  conjec- 
tural making;  they  are  made,  and,  more  to  the  purpose, 
have  been  kept;  they  are  to  be  taken  as  Dryden  would 
*  Hume  of  Godscroft,  Child,  iii,  295. 


266  THE  BALLADS 

have  men  take  Chaucer,  and  one  is  glad  enough  to  say 
that  here  is  God's  plenty.^ 

VI.     THE    GREENWOOD    BALLADS 

The  epic  process  of  balladry  does  not  culminate  in 
heroic  pieces  such  as  we  have  been  noting.  Of  these, 
indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  except  in  their  traditional 
ballad  style,  and  in  their  compactness,  their  swifter  and 
more  irregular  pace,  they  do  not  differ  essentially  from 
longer  epic  poems.  Professor  Ker  has  shown  that  the 
chasm  between  epic  and  heroic  song  is  no  wide,  impas- 
sable affair.  Still  less  is  the  difference  between  popular 
ballad  and  popular  epic;  and  this  difference  can  be 
studied  at  will  in  the  various  pieces  which  make  up  the 
Robin  Hood  group  as  compared  with  the  Gest,  an  actual 
though  not  elaborate  epic  poem.^  Its  hero,  of  course,  is 
the  outlaw. 

*  The  "popular"  Cheiry  Chase  of  the  broadsides,  though  it  was 
worked  over  from  traditional  sources,  has  as  little  of  the  typical  and 
traditional  ballad  structure  as  the  manuscript  Cheviot;  but  one  would 
like  to  have  heard  those  Scottish  shepherds  sing,  and  perhaps  dance, 
their  Hunttis  of  Chevet..  The  fragment  of  Otterburn  (B)  combines  bor- 
rowing of  the  chronicle  ballad  with  its  owti  popular  stanzas  not  derived 
from  the  chronicle  ballad  ;  and  the  line  of  cleavage  is  evident.  The 
point  is  not  only  that  no  facts  support  the  idea,  which  some  critics  are 
fond  of  advancing,  that  a  heroic  tale  such  as  the  Cheviot,  told  in  the 
manner  of  romance,  falls  like  crumbs  from  the  knight's  table  among 
retainers,  scullions,  and  begging-minstrels,  who  cook  it  again  into  a 
popular  ballad  with  more  or  less  pitiful  repetition  and  other  "slang," 
but  that  a  convincing  array  of  facts  can  be  brought  against  this  theory. 
See  Kittredge,  in  the  Cambridge  ed.  of  Child's  Ballads,  pp.  xvf.;  and 
the  present  writer,  in  Modem  Philology,  1904. 

'  These  are  compared,  on  lines  laid  down  by  Professor  Ker,  in 


DETACHED    OUTLAW   BALLADS  267 

The  outlaw,  now  as  humble  poacher  and  now  as  ideal 
champion  of  the  rights  of  man  against  church  and  state, 
is  a  natural  favorite  of  the  ballad  muse.  She  has  little 
liking,  however,  for  George  Borrow's  friend,  the  gypsy, 
who  came  into  view  too  late  for  the  best  traditional  song; 
he  has  just  one  ballad  to  his  credit.  John  Faa  ^  was  a 
leading  name  among  the  gypsies;  and  this  particular 
hero,  so  it  seems,  was  hanged  in  Scotland  about  1624. 
The  ballad  without  warrant  of  fact  makes  the  Countess 
of  Cassilis  leave  her  earl  and  elope  with  Johny  Faa, 
whose  people  had  "coost  the  glamer  o'er  her."  There  is 
plenty  of  repetition,  and  a  thoroughly  traditional  style. 
Another  Johnie,  however,  and  with  no  trace  of  the 
vagrom  blood,  is  more  to  our  purpose.  "This  precious 
specimen  of  the  unspoiled  traditional  ballad"  is  Mr. 
Child's  eulogy  of  "  Johnie  Cock,"  ^  and  Professor  Brandl, 
defying  tradition,  has  undertaken  to  restore  the  original 
text  of  the  ballad;  but  as  a  matter  of  fact,  traditional 
ballads  have  no  text  in  the  ordinary  meaning  of  the  word. 
"There  are  texts,"  as  Professor  Kittredge  says,  "but 
there  is  no  text."  Old  things  and  new  jostle  each  other 
in  "Johnie  Cock;"  wolves  roam  about,  and  birds  give 
information,  but  Johnie  himself,  in  a  version  taken  down 
in  1780,  wears  not  only  Lincoln  green,  but  "shoes  of  the 

A.  Heusler's  Lied  und  Epos,  1905,  pp.  37  ff.  A  volume  by  Professor 
W.  M.  Hart,  soon  to  be  published,  examines  the  case  at  length  and 
with  interesting  results. 

1  See  no.  200,  The  Gypsy  Laddie. 

2  See,  for  the  following,  nos.  114,  115,  116,  118  to  154  inclusive,  and 
117,  the  Gest. 


268  THE  BALLADS 

American  leather."  What  Johnie  does,  however,  is  the 
same  in  all  versions :  he  disregards  his  mother's  benison 
and  malison  alike,  her  proffered  wine  and  bread,  and 
goes  off  to  hunt  the  dun  deer.  An  old  palmer,  or  other 
informer,  sees  him  and  tells  the  seven  foresters,  who  sur- 
prise him,  wounding  him  badly,  but  are  all  killed  save 
one.  Johnie's  indignation  at  the  unmanly  mode  of  attack 
is  curiously  expressed  :  — 

"  'The  wildest  wolf  in  aw  this  wood 
Wad  not  ha'  done  so  by  me ; 
She'd  ha'  wet  her  foot  i'  th'  wan  water, 
And  sprinkled  it  o'er  my  bree ; 
^  And  if  that  wad  not  ha'  waken'd  me, 

She  wad  ha'  gone  and  let  me  be.' " 

It  goes  with  a  burden,  this  sterling  old  song,  and  has 
traces  of  an  incremental  repetition  that  has  been  reduced 
to  lowest  terms  by  impatient  transcribers.  But  the  dra- 
matic throb  is  still  there.  Burden  and  repetition  are  still 
more  to  the  front  in  a  very  old  greenwood  ballad  preserved 
by  a  manuscript  of  the  fifteenth  century.  "Robyn  and 
Gandelyn  "  is  not  a  part  of  the  Robin  Hood  cycle,  though 
it  has  some  resemblance  to  the  type.  Robyn,  or  Robert, 
uses  his  namesake's  oath,  and  he  goes  with  Gandel}"!! 
after  deer  as  Robin  goes  with  Little  John  on  other  quests. 
Wrennok  of  Donne  shoots  Robert  from  ambush,  —  "out 
of  the  west;"  whereupon  Gandelyn  takes  vengeance, 
cleaving  Wrennok 's  heart  with  an  arrow.  — 

"  'Now  xalt '  thou  never  yelpe/  Wrennok, 
At  ale  ne  at  wyn ; 

'  Shalt;  boast. 


ADAM   BELL  269 

That  thu  hast  slawe  '  goode  Robyn 
And  his  knave  '  Gandeleyn. 

" '  Now  xalt  thou  never  yelpe,  Wrennok, 

At  wyn  ne  at  ale. 
That  thu  hast  slawe  goode  Robyn 

And  Gandeleyn  his  knave.' 
Robin  lygth  in  grene  wode  bowndyn." 

Despite  its  beginning,  "I  herde  a  carpyng  of  a  clerk," 
attributing  the  tale  to  a  scholar's  song,  this  bit  of  verse  is 
of  indirect  popular  origin.  At  beginning  and  end,  as  in 
Danish  ballads,  is  the  burden:  Robin  lies  in  greenwood 
bound  ;  while  the  incremental  repetitions  in  so  old  a  copy 
are  valuable  evidence  for  its  primitive  structure.  "Adam 
Bell"  brings  us  to  very  different  matter.  Reprinted  often, 
a  regular  story  in  one  hundred  and  seventy  stanzas,  it 
has  a  good  plot  —  partly  used  again  in  the  ballad  of 
"Auld  Matrons"  —  and  situations  of  absorbing  interest 
such  as  the  Tell  episode  where  Cloudesley  shoots  the 
apple  from  his  son's  head.  This,  like  other  good  things, 
is  probably  imported  from  abroad;  to  ascribe  it  to  an 
old  Aryan  sun-myth  is  futile.  These  ballads  all  praise 
good  archery;  and  such  a  story  would  fall  into  the  out- 
law's doings  as  to  a  magnet.  The  three  heroes  are  sworn 
brothers;  and  their  narrative  shows  distinct  traces  of  an 
arranging  hand  in  dealing  with  the  abundant  traditional 
and  popular  material.  It  is  treated  very  briefly  here 
because  arrangements  of  this  sort,  the  combination  and 
the  interplay,  are  most  conveniently  studied  in  a  com- 
pilation like  the  "  Gest."  Moreover,  the  "rescue "  part  of 
*  Slain;   servant,  squire. 


270  THE  BALLADS 

"Adam  Bell"  is  repeated  in  "Robin  Hood  and  the 
Monk,"  one  of  the  best  ballads  of  its  kind  ever  made, 
just  as  the  surprised  porter,  the  outwitted  citizens,  the 
slain  sheriff,  the  "complacent  king,"  and  the  happy  end- 
ing, return  not  only  in  the  better  known  cycle  but  in  the 
"Gest"  itself.  Here,  too,  though  in  slightest  compass, 
we  meet  the  "nature  introduction;"  we  roam  with  merry 
archers  under  the  green  leaves,  and  fleet  the  time  in  a 
style  akin  to  Robin's  own  royal  way.  We  hear  the  reciter, 
too,  already  met  in  the  "Cheviot,"  with  his  "listen,  gen- 
tlemen," and  his  warning  of  a  completed  "fit:"  — 

"To  Caerlel  went  these  good  yemen 
In  a  mery  morning  of  Maye : 
Here  is  a  fit  of  Cloudesli, 
And  another  is  for  to  saye." 

The  rhapsode  has  arrived. 

As  we  have  said,  the  progress  of  heroic  ballads  through 
a  cycle  up  to  a  coherent  epic  poem  lies  before  us  in  its 
latter  stages,  although  its  actual  beginning  and  its  pos- 
sible end  cannot  be  seen.  "The  Gest  of  Robin  Hood"  is 
an  epic  poem  in  that  it  tells  its  connected  story  about  a 
definite  hero;  and  it  is  put  together,  smoothed, and  com- 
pleted into  unity,  out  of  sundry  epic  ballads  which  them- 
selves make  a  single  though  not  a  coherent  group.  While 
we  have  not  the  actual  pieces  used  for  the  making  of  this 
epic,  we  have  versions  which  correspond  very  closely  to 
them.  Had  the  "Gest"  been  composed  in  an  unlettered 
age,  had  its  hero  been  national  as  well  as  popular,  the 
epic  process  would  have  gone  on  its  way  to  higher  and 


ROBIN   HOOD   BALLADS  AND   PLAYS         271 

wider  achievement.  Confined  to  humble  tradition  and 
the  interest  of  a  class,  it  reached  no  advanced  stage, 
and  can  be  called  full  epic  only  by  the  courtesy  of  antici- 
pation. For  the  other  extreme  of  the  process,  there  is  rea- 
sonable conjecture.  It  would  be  an  enormous  gain  to  the 
science  of  literature  if  one  could  follow  back  to  their  be- 
ginnings, not  only  actual  ballads  of  the  cycle,  but  also  that 
dramatic  or  even  ritual  treatment^  of  the  theme  which 
analogy  with  other  cases  forbids  us  to  confine  to  such 
late,  incidental,  and  corrupted  specimens  of  the  Robin 
Hood  plays  as  have  been  preserved.  Little  more  than  the 
name  comes  to  these  from  greenwood  tradition;  Maid 
Marian  is  an  impertinence,  mere  Marion  of  the  French 
Robin,  and  no  mate  for  our  outlaw.  Fragmehts,  however, 
of  the  true  greenwood  drama  occur;  such  is  the  bit  of  a 
play,  preserved  in  a  manuscript  which  must  be  older 
than  the  memorandum  of  1475  on  its  back,  with  plot 
similar  to  the  story  of  "Robin  Hood  and  Guy  of  Gis- 
borne."    But  the  plays  do  little  for  our  purpose. 

A  careful  study  of  the  ballads,  however,  makes  it  rea- 
sonably sure  that  they  were  sung  in  the  first  instance  about 
some  local  hero  in  the  manner  of  "Robin  and  Gandelyn" 
and  "  Johnie  Cock,"  but  with  the  structure  of  a  dramatic 
ballad  of  situation.^    Overwhelming  popular  favor  has- 

'  The  May  festival  claims  Robin  for  its  own,  and  with  good  reason; 
but  these  relations  belong  to  students  of  our  earliest  drama. 

^  The  language  of  the  Gest,  which  was  printed  near  1500,  contains 
some  Middle  English  forms  which  may  be  "relics  of  the  ballads  from 
which  this  little  epic  was  made  up,"  or  else  the  natural  language  of  a 
poem  "  put  together  as  early  as  1400  or  before."  See  Child,  iii,  40. 


272  THE  BALLADS 

tened  the  epic  course.  As  Arthur  probably  began  with 
some  real  chieftain  and  formed  the  nucleus  for  innumer- 
able accretions  of  fiction  and  fact  from  every  side,  grow- 
ing into  the  sovran  ruler  of  all  romance  as  well  as  "the 
flower  of  kings,"  so  a  petty  fugitive  of  whatever  name, 
poaching  on  the  royal  preserves,  may  well  have  growm  in 
fame,  appropriated  the  legends  of  other  fugitives,  and  so 
become  what  Professor  Child  has  called  him,  the  ideal 
outlaw.  His  character  is  drawn  in  terms  of  eulogy.  He 
is  distinctly  named  as  one  who  did  poor  men  much  good; 
and  poor  men  of  the  fourteenth  century  not  only  needed 
a  friend,  not  only  were  ready  to  hail  him  hero,  but,  in 
their  humble  song,  could  save  that  friend  and  hero  from 
the  fate  of  the  unrecorded  brave.  The  author  of  "Piers 
Plowman  "  yearned  for  a  body  of  knights  and  gentlemen 
who  would  protect  the  poor  peasant,  but  chivalry  did  no- 
thing of  this  kind;  what  wonder  that  the  generous  outlaw 
should  appeal  to  popular  sympathy  ?  Robin  took  from 
the  rich  and  gave  to  the  lowly,  correcting  sociological 
abuses,  and  gaining  that  gratitude  which  the  Mephts  of 
modern  Greece  have  won  from  the  popular  muse.  A  very 
pedestrian  muse  in  our  own  day  has  taken  kindly  to 
bandits  like  Jesse  James;  but  Robin  was  hero  not  of  the 
rabble,  but  of  the  people  at  large,  the  commons  of  Eng- 
land in  a  wide,  rural  sense.  Robin,  again,  is  no  old 
divinity,  no  Woden,  Odin,  Hooden,  come  upon  the  parish; 
he  is  just  as  he  is  sung,  outlaw,  archer,  foe  of  the  unco' 
guid  and  the  unco'  rich,  the  poor  man's  friend.  Yet  he  is 
no  humble  person.  He  is  lavishly  generous,  full  of  pride, — 


ROBIN  THE  IDEAL   OUTLAW  273 

"Robin  was  a  proud  outlaw,"  runs  the  verse,  —  and  of 
exquisite  courtesy.  He  harms  no  woman.  The  laudatory 
touches  are  general,  ideal;  his  "milk-white  side  "  is 
vaguely  aristocratic,  and  the  fact  that  an  inch  of  his 
body  was  worth  a  whole  man  reminds  one  of  the  de- 
scriptions of  Beowulf's  hand-grip,  —  strong  as  that  of 
thirty  men.  In  brief,  the  ideal  outlaw,  a  vividly  drawn 
type. 

With  this  theory  of  Robin's  provenience  agree  such 
facts  as  can  be  gathered.  The  mention  of  him  in  the 
fourteenth  century  by  an  Englishman,  and  early  in  the 
fifteenth  by  a  Scot,  testifies  to  his  vogue;  and  the  English 
account  is  significant.  Sloth, in  "Piers  Plowman, "  knows 
"rymes  of  Robyn  Hood  and  Randolf,  erle  of  Chester." 
Identification  of  the  rank  of  these  two,  often  attempted, 
is  absurd  on  the  face  of  it;  for  the  cycles  differed  utterly. 
Sloth  evidently  held  at  command  two  groups  of  songs, 
one  of  battle  and  feud,  in  which  the  great  earl  spent  his 
half-century  full  in  the  public  eye,  and  one  of  humbler 
origin,  which  was  so  far  complete  by  1377,  the  earliest 
date  for  this  reference,  that  one  may  assume  the  "Gest" 
itself  to  have  been  made  not  many  years  later.  We  should 
say  now  that  Sloth  had  equal  liking  for  history  and  for 
romance;  nor  do  we  admit  for  a  moment  that  Sloth's 
taste  was  in  question.  Probably  his  industrious  and  pious 
friend  Piers,  though  a  rank  Puritan,  was  fond  of  a  good 
cleanly  ballad,  only  he  did  not  neglect  his  pater-noster 
for  secular  song.  Those  two  cycles,  united  in  Sloth's 
memory,  have  been  divided  by  fate.     The  history  has 


274  THE  BALLADS 

disappeared,  the  romance  lives  on.  Randolf,  second  or 
third  earl,  or  perhaps  a  compound  of  both,  who  now 
defied  royalty  and  now  made  peace  and  pact,  was  at 
times  an  outlaw  on  the  grand  scale,  and  offered  every 
inducement  for  immortality  in  song;  but,  like  Hereward, 
he  is  for  us  a  ballad-hero  without  his  ballads,^  while 
the  fortuitous  Robin  Hood,  "absolutely  a  creation  of  the 
ballad  muse,"  with  no  history  to  commend  him,  is  the 
hero  of  an  excellent  epic  and  of  thirty-six  known  in- 
dividual ballads,  good  and  bad,  besides  those  that  have 
gone  the  way  of  destruction.  Of  the  thirty-six,  as  Child 
points  out,  four  are  of  quite  ancient  form:  "Robin  Hood 
and  the  Monk"  and  "Robin  Hood  and  the  Potter,"  from 
old  manuscripts  of  the  fifteenth  century,  "Robin  Hood 
and  Guy  of  Gisborne"  and  "Robin  Hood's  Death,"  from 
the  Percy  Folio.  The  rest,  mainly  gathered  from  broad- 
sides and  garlands,  while  popular  in  some  respects,  often 
give  Robin  a  sorry  fate,  bringing  him  down  to  the  stupid, 
amicable  bully  whom  any  stray  tinker  or  tramp  can 
soundly  thrash,  and  striking,  in  most  cases,  a  deplorably 
poor  note.  So  Charlemagne  declines  from  the  all-wise 
and  all-powerful  hero  of  the  earliest  chansons  de  geste  to 
the  weak,  vassal-ruled  figure  of  twelfth-century  accounts. 
Most  of  these  garlands  and  broadsides  preserve  sound 
old  ballad  stuff  in  its  dotage,  as  a  bit  of  comparison 
will  show.  In  the  "Gest"  Little  John  remarks  to  Robin 
that  it  is  time  for  dinner:  — 

"Than  bespake  hym  gode  Robyn  : 
'To  dyne  have  I  noo  lust 


ROBIN   DEGENERATE  275 

Till  that  I  have  som  bolde  baron, 
Or  som  unkouth  gest,'  " '  — 

which,  as  Professor  Child  reminds  us,  was  King  Arthur's 
way.  In  "Robin  Hood  Newly  Revived"  the  singer  calls 
on  all  "gentlemen  in  this  bower"  to  listen  to  him,  and 
then  plunges  into  the  dialogue  as  follows :  — 

" '  What  time  of  the  day  ? '   quoth  Robin  Hood  then 
Quoth  Little  John,  '  'T  is  in  the  prime.' 
•  Why  then  we  will  to  the  green  wood  gang. 
For  we  have  no  vittles  to  dine.' " 

It  is  not  all  as  deject  and  wretched,  to  be  sure;  but  that 
is  too  often  the  tone  of  the  late  "popular"  ballads.^  A 
glance  at  these  will  suffice,  nor  is  it  even  well  to  make  a 
list  of  their  titles.  Of  the  good  and  ancient  versions,  how- 
ever, it  may  be  said  that  nothing  better  of  their  kind  can 
be  found  in  any  time  or  place;  none,  says  Professor  Child, 
"please  so  many  and  please  so  long."  But  they  should 
not  be  made  over  in  condescending  prose  and  mixed  with 
alien  stuff.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  original  Robin 
Hood  of  these  sterling  poems,  the  "pious  founder"  him- 
self, who  loves  his  king,  though  he  eats  the  king's  deer 
and  shoots  the  king's  officers,  who  gets  uneasy  if  he  can- 

'  "  Stranger  as  guest." 

^  The  best  of  these  ballads  of  the  "secondary"  period  is  one  that  may 
be  derived  from  North  Country  tradition,  and  is  in  the  better  traditional 
style,  —  Robin  Hood  and  the  Beggar,  ii,  no.  134  in  Child.  See  his 
remarks,  iii,  159.  Another  good  ballad  is  no.  144,  Robin  Hood  and  the 
Bishop  of  Hereford,  composed  by  somebody  on  the  basis  of  the  Gest,  but 
well  composed.  Forty  years  ago  it  was  the  most  popular  Robin  Hood 
ballad  sung  in  England. 


276  THE  BALLADS 

not  attend  church,  though  he  exacts  huge  sums  from  the 
monks,  who  helps  the  poor  everywhere  and  even  an  occa- 
sional worthy  knight,  who  holds  a  kind  of  greenwood 
assizes,  and  when  made  an  official  at  the  king's  court 
pines  for  his  forest  and  the  dun  deer,  and  who  has  such 
a  follower  as  Little  John,  should  be  presented  to  healthy 
youth  along  with  those  Maid  Marians  and  Friar  Tucks 
who  have  no  ballad  rights  to  existence  on  any  terms. 
It  is  true  that  many  of  the  inferior  ballads  about  Robin 
Hood  had  their  vogue ;  they  were  often  meant  for  singing,  ^ 
and  have  a  burden.  The  last  of  them,  however,  "A  True 
Tale  of  Robin  Hood,"  professing  to  be  history,  is  the  work 
of  a  known  author,  Martin  Parker,  the  only  poem  in 
Child's  collection  which  is  not  anonymous;  and  it  is  a 
dreary  compilation  indeed.  It  ends  with  a  supposed 
epitaph  from  the  hero's  tomb  in  Yorkshire;  and  of  course 
Robin  is  Earl  of  Huntington.  More  to  the  purpose  are 
the  broadsides  and  garlands,  beloved  of  rural  England; 
yet,  while  a  few  commonplaces  occur  in  these  and  in- 
cremental repetition  now  and  then  is  used,  the  com- 
monplaces are  seldom  apposite  and  the  repetition  rarely 
effective.  Lovers  of  the  traditional  ballad  have  little  to 
do  with  these  broadsides,  save  as  with  studies  in  degen- 
eration; while  the  popular  heroic  ballad  is  seen  at  its 
best  in  the  old  and  sterling  pieces  to  which  we  now  turn. 
Striking  are  the  differences  between  this  group  and 
those  ballads  of  situation  which  were  assumed  as  normal 

•  For  example,  nos.  122,  with  traces  of  repetition,  123,  124,  125,  126, 
132, 133,  135,  143,  and  150. 


THE  TOUCH   OF  NATURE  277 

and  at  no  great  distance  from  choral  origins.  "Guy," 
"The  Monk,"  "The  Potter,"  are  long  stories,  epic 
through  and  through.  Each  begins  with  description  of  the 
greenwood,  with  the  boon  season  and  the  singing  birds. 
Like  the  conventional  May  morn  of  so  many  poems,  this 
descriptive  opening  —  it  is  echoed  with  variations  as 
overture  to  the  Canterbury  Tales  —  is  supposed  to  have 
been  brought  into  vogue  by  medieval  Latin  poets, 
although  it  seems  more  probable  that  these  poets  were 
themselves  inspired  by  choral  summer  songs  of  the  folk. 
But  it  is  not  an  original  traditional  ballad  affair;  it 
belongs  both  to  pure  lyric,  like  that  old  Proven9al  song 
of  the  regine  Avrillouse,  and  to  these  incipient  epics  of  the 
greenwood.  Least  meritorious  of  the  four,  "The  Potter'* 
has  the  shortest  and  barest  opening  ;  and  "Guy," 
though  admirable,  is  just  a  trifle  too  abrupt.  When 
shaws  are  sheen  and  copses  fair,  we  are  told,  and  leaves 
large  and  long,  it  is  merry  to  hear  the  small  birds  singing 
in  the  forest.    Then  the  tense  shifts  :  — 

"The  woodweele  sang  and  wold  not  cease 
Amongst  the  leaves  a  lyne;  * 
And  it  is  by  two  wight  yeomen, 
By  deare  God,  that  I  meane." 

And  the  story  can  begin.  "The  Monk,"  however,  most 
successful  of  these  pieces,  while  opening  in  the  same 
way,  has  its  conventional  material  under  better  artistic 
control,  runs  more  smoothly,  and  joins  its  scene  very 
prettily  with  its  story.      These  beginning   stanzas   are 

'  Linden  leaves. 


278  THE  BALLADS 

already  classic,  —  if  by  "classic"  oue  means  the  best 
things  in  a  literature  :  — 

"In  somer,  when  the  shawes  be  sheyne, 
And  leves  be  large  and  long. 
Hit  is  full  mery  in  feyre  foreste 
To  here  the  foulys  song  : 

"To  se  the  dere  draw  to  the  dale, 
And  leva  the  hilles  hee, 
And  shadow  hem  in  the  leves  grene, 
Under  the  grene- wode  tre.* 

"Hit  befel  on  Whitsontide, 
Erly  in  a  May  mornyng. 
The  son  up  feyre  can  shyne, 
And  the  briddis  mery  can  syng. 

" '  This  is  a  mery  mornyng,'  seid  Litull  John, 
'  Be  hym  that  dyed  on  tre ; 
A  more  mery  man  then  1  am  one 
Lyves  not  in  Christiajite. 

" '  Pluk  up  thi  hert,  my  dere  mayster,' 
Litull  John  can  sey, 
'And  thynk  hit  is  a  full  fayre  tyiae 
In  a  mornyng  of  May.'  " 

Here  the  epic  opening,  itself  an  accretion  upon  the  old 
dramatic  and  choral  ballad,  is  provided  with  an  intro- 
duction beautiful  for  purposes  of  art,  but  superfluous  in  a 
song  made  up  wholly  of  action  and  dialogue.  Dominance 
of  actual  situation  over  description  and  story  comes  more 
into  view  in  "Robin  Hood's  Death,"  which  opens  with 

'  The  late  Dr.  Boynton,  in  an  unpublished  dissertation  on  ballad 
refrains,  copy  in  Harvard  College  Library,  pp.  237  f.,  thinks  that  this 
opening  was  once  a  true  burden-stem  such  as  one  often  finds  at  the 
beginning  of  Danish  ballads. 


ROBIN   HOOD'S   DEATH  279 

a  dialogue  and  makes  no  mention  of  time  or  place.  Robin 
is  ill;  he  must  go  to  Churchlees  and  be  let  blood.  Danger 
from  a  yeoman  there  is  urged ;  let  Robin  take  a  sufficient 
bodyguard.  He  will  take  only  Little  John.  They  shoot  as 
they  go,  and  pass  a  black  water  with  a  plank  over  it  where 
kneels  an  old  woman  banning  Robin  Hood;  her  reasons 
are  lost  with  a  lost  leaf  of  the  Percy  Folio.  Doubtless,  as 
Child  says,  she  is  a  hired  witch;  and  presently  there  are 
women  weeping  for  Robin's  "dear  body  that  this  day 
must  be  let  blood."  Omens  are  in  the  air,  but  Robin  fears 
not;  dame-prior  is  his  kin.  The  catastrophe  is  effective 
enough;  and  the  singer  makes  boding  comment  as  Robin 
rolls  up  his  sleeve  and  the  prioress  prepares  her  blood- 
irons.  — 

"  I  hold  him  but  an  unwise  man 
That  will  noe  warning  leeve." 

The  blood-irons  are  laid  on;  a  familiar  stanza,  common- 
place indeed,  begins  but  is  not  finished,  —  for  here  at  the 
end,  whatever  the  opening  verses,  is  no  mood  for  lingering 
repetition,  choral  devices,  or  dramatic  effect,  but  a  plain 

story  to  tell :  — 

"  And  first  it  bled,  the  thicke,  thicke  blood, 
And  afterwards  the  thinne. 
And  well  then  vrist  good  Robin  Hoode 
Treason  there  was  within  .  .  ."  ^ 

The  "Babylon"  ballad  would  have  made  us  infer  all 

this.   Then  there  is  a  struggle  with  one  Red  Roger,  lover 

^  One  expects :  — 

"  And  syne  came  out  the  bonny  heart's  blood; 
There  was  nae  mair  within," 

as  in  Sir  Hugh,  and  elsewhere;  but  Robin  is  not  dead  yet,  and  the  singer 

is  wary. 


280  THE  BALLADS 

of  the  prioress,  and  Robin's  foe;  but  though  Red  Roger 
wounds  the  weakened  man,  he  gets  swift  death  from 
him  and  a  farewell  of  scorn.  Dying,  Robin  calls  for  the 
last  sacrament,  forbids  Little  John  to  "burn  up  all 
Churchlee,"  lest  "some  widow"  should  be  hurt  and  just 
blame  come  of  it.  "  But  take  me  on  thy  back.  Little  John ; 
make  me  a  fair  grave;  set  my  sword  at  my  head,  arrows 
at  my  feet,  and  my  yew-bow  by  my  side.  .  .  ." 

The  rest  is  silence  or  disorder;  ^  for  the  few  missing 
verses  can  have  done  nothing  more.  The  interest  of  this 
fine  ballad,  compared  with  other  traditional  verse,  lies  in 
its  simple  but  appropriate  art.  Short  as  it  is,  it  differs  in 
quality  from  the  dramatic  and  normal  type.  It  has  really 
but  one  situation,  and  approaches  the  scene  individable, 
—  but  by  a  long  and  detailed  introduction ;  its  structure 
is  narrative  throughout.  In  the  other  old  ballads,  of 
course,  there  can  be  no  talk  of  a  situation ;  they  are  story, 
and  good  story,  from  end  to  end.  "Guy"  aboimds  in 
alliterative  and  proverbial  phrases;  but,  like  all  these  bal- 
lads, shuns  incremental  repetition — save  for  one  faint 
echo  —  as  a  useless,  outworn  art.  There  is  comment  on 
the  story;  and  Professor  Child  finds  a  curious  parallel 
with  Byron's  lines  in  "Childe  Harold"  when  one  reads 
that  he  who  "had  been  neither  kith  nor  kin"  would  have 
enjoyed  the  sight  of  Robin's  long  duel  with  Sir  Guy,  — 
a  touch  of  the  reflective   note   common  to   all   artistic 

'  No  details  are  given  at  the  end  of  the  Gest.  Robin  is  betrayed  to 
death  by  the  prioress  and  Syr  Roger  of  Donkestere.  The  prayer  for 
Robin's  soul  which  concludes  the  Gest  may  well  have  ended  the  ballad. 


GUY   AND   THE   MONK  281 

poems.  This  fight  is  described  in  more  detail  than  is 
usual.  The  "two  hours"  limit  is  observed;  the  inevit- 
able shrew^d  thrust  of  the  victim  is  recorded,  which  is 
followed  by  the  victor's  final  blow,  the  "ackwarde 
stroke,"  but  it  is  explained  here  that  Robin  "was  reck- 
less on  a  root,"  stumbled,  and  so  exposed  himself.  All 
ballad  readers  know  that  in  "Sir  Guy"  Robin,  dressed 
in  the  slain  knight's  horse-hide  weeds,  fools  the  sheriff 
of  Nottingham  and  releases  Little  John,  who  kills  that 
luckless  oflScial  in  the  last  stanza.  In  "The  Monk," 
Robin  quarrels  with  Little  John  on  the  way  to  church, 
strikes  him,  and  is  left  to  go  alone;  at  mass  a  great- 
headed  monk  ("I  pray  to  God,  woe  be  he!"  ejaculates 
the  singer)  betrays  Robin  to  the  sheriff,  and  the  outlaws 
presently  hear  sad  news.  Robin  is  in  a  dungeon,  awaiting 
the  king's  order  for  execution.  But  Little  John  and  Much 
slay  the  messenger  monk  and  take  his  letters  to  the  king. 
"Where  is  this  monk.?"  —  "He  died  on  the  way,"  says 
Little  John  simply.  Humor,  by  the  bye,  begins  to  lift 
its  head  in  this  ballad,  and  increases  in  the  "Gest."  ^ 
Armed  with  the  king's  seal,  John  and  Much  go  to  Not- 
tingham; and  again,  "Where  is  the  monk.?"  asks  the 
sheriff.  "The  king,"  replies  John,  "has  created  him 
abbot  of  Westminster."  After  the  sheriff  has  been  made 
drunk  with  wine  and  ale,  the  pair  unbind  Robin  and 
escape  with  him  to  merry  Sherwood.  "There,"  says 
John,  "  I  have  done  thee  a  good  turn.   Farewell  and  have 

'  Mainly  there  as  humor  of  the  situation,  not  of  character,  or,  as 
here,  of  phrase. 


282  THE  BALLADS 

good  day!"  "Nay,"  says  Robin,  "be  master  of  my  men 
and  me!"  —  "Only  thy  fellow,"  answers  John;  and  the 
quarrel  is  mended  nobly.  The  king's  remarks  when  he 
hears  of  the  trick  are  delightful.  "  Little  John  has  beguiled 
both  me  and  the  sheriff.  And  I  gave  those  fellows  good 
money,  and  safe-conduct !  —  Well,  he  is  true  to  his 
master.  .  .  . 

" '  Speke  no  more  of  this  matter,'  seid  oure  kyng, 
'But  John  has  begyled  us  alle.' "  ' 

The  poet  of  the  "Gest  "  does  not  go  much  beyond  the 
art  of  these  ballads,  versions  of  which  he  works  into  his 

'  There  is  noticeable  in  this  passage  (at  stt.  86-87)  a  tendency, 
obvious  for  reciters  and  singers  of  long  ballads,  and  common  in  Scandi- 
navian pieces,  to  repeat  from  one  stanza  into  another.  It  occurs  in  the 
border-ballads  (Dick  o'  the  Cow,  22-23,  26-27,  and  other  cases),  in  Guy 
(36-37),  elsewhere  in  the  Monk  (77-78),  and  frequently  in  the  Gest  (24- 
25;  156-157;  etc.).  For  an  example,  Ijittle  John  says  in  the  Monk :  — 

"  '  I  have  done  thee  a  gode  turne  for  an  evill, 
Quyte  the  whan  thou  may. 

'  I  have  done  thee  a  gode  turne '  said  Litull  John, 
Ffor  sothe  as  I  you  say.'  " 

There  is  one  case  of  incremental  repetition  in  the  Gest  (57-58),  but  it  is 
for  emphasis,  and  not  the  conventional  kind.  The  favorite  form  of  repe- 
tition in  which  the  Gest  agrees  with  balladry  at  large,  and  even  with 
writers  like  Layamon  (Fehr,  Formelhafte  Elemente  in  den  alten  Eng- 
lischen  Balladen,  p.  47),  is  the  epic  repetition,  not  without  value  for 
reciters:  "  They  looked  east,  they  looked  west,"  Gest,  20,  is  like  "  Some- 
times she  sank  and  sometymes  she  swam  "  in  The  Twa  Sisters.  Com- 
monplaces, moreover,  must  be  sundered  from  current  phrases  like 
"Glasgerryon  swore  a  full  great  othe,"  repeated  in  the  Gest,  st.  110.  It 
is  to  be  wished  that  these  "formal  elements"  could  be  studied,  and  not 
simply  catalogued  as  in  Fehr's  dissertation.  Even  his  comparison  with 
old  Germanic  formulas  is  not  worked  out. 


THE   ART   OF   THE   GEST  283 

little  epic.^  Eight  "fits"  tell  his  story,  in  four  hundred 
and  fifty-odd  quatrains  and  less  than  two  thousand  lines. 
No  story  was  ever  told  to  better  purpose,  and  with  better 
skill ;  the  pace  is  not  strenuous;  and  all  tragic  suggestions 
are  banned.  A  touch  of  the  pathetic,  natural  as  breath- 
insr.  is  Robin's  homesickness  at  Edward's  court;  but 
the  rebound  is  quick  when  the  outlaw  fools  his  king  for 
a  seven  days'  furlough,  reaches  greenwood,  hears  the 
"small  notes"  of  merry  birds,  and  "hsts  a  little  for  to 
shoot  at  the  dun  deer."  No  tragic  use  is  made  of  Robin's 
betrayal  and  death ;  five  stanzas  compress  the  long  story 
of  the  separate  ballad,  and  the  close  is  a  simple  prayer  for 
the  soul  of  a  "good  outlaw"  who  "did  poor  men  much 
good."  Robin's  deeds  and  not  his  death  interest  our  poet. 
His  most  successful  work  is  in  the  story  of  Robin's  loan 
to  Sir  Richard  on  the  security  of  Our  Lady,  and  the 
involuntary  payment  of  the  loan  by  a  monk  of  St.  Mary's 
abbey.  The  dialogue  is  easy  and  straightforward, 
advancing  the  action  naturally;  intervals  are  bridged  by 
a  stanza  or  so  of  explanation ;  and  there  is  hardly  a  trace 
of  the  alternate  leaping  and  lingering,  familiar  in  the 
normal  ballad.  The  ballad  commonplaces  are  absolutely 
wanting;  though  a  few  standing  "epic  phrases"  recur  as 
mere  connectives,  and  there  are  patch- verses  —  "without 

1  Johnson's  ridicule  of  ballads  was  only  one  of  his  friendly  growls. 
He  had  to  dust  Percy's  jacket  once  or  twice ;  but  really  he  liked  the 
things.  He  refers  twice  to  Johnny  Armstrong,  and  quotes  it  once  (Hill's 
Boswell.  V,  43);  while  of  Ossian  he  says  (ibid,  v,  164,  389)  that  "it  is 
no  better  than  such  an  epic  poem  as  he  could  make  from  the  song  of 
Robin  Hood." 


284  THE   BALLADS 

any  leasynge"  —  like  the  phrases  in  "Otterburn."  The 
whole  story  of  the  "  Gest,"  while  told  in  the  simplest  man- 
ner and  in  the  normal  ballad  measure,  is  quite  free  from 
complications  and  repetitions  of  the  ballad  structure, 
from  all  choral  clogs,  and  is  a  precious  specimen  of  epic 
development  on  lines  closer  to  the  primitive  and  unlet- 
tered course  than  can  be  shown  in  any  literature  of  any 
time.  A  poet  is  behind  this  story,  not  an  improvising 
throng,  not  even,  as  in  the  case  of  ballads  like  "  Babylon," 
a  series  of  singers  who  derive  in  longer  or  shorter  reaches 
of  tradition  from  an  improvising  throng;  but  the  poet  is 
quite  unsophisticated,  and  his  art,  even  in  its  half-per- 
sonal comment  on  the  course  of  events,  is  only  a  con- 
scious application  of  the  simple  objective  epic  process  by 
which  the  original  ballads  came  to  their  best  estate. 

The  fact  of  evolution,  not  in  any  wise  a  theory,  con- 
fronts the  student  of  ballads  from  their  palpably  choral, 
dramatic,  iterating,  intensifying,  momentary  state  up  to 
this  narrative  perfection  of  the  "Gest."  Facing  these 
differences,  not  only  must  he  regard  this  body  of  ballads 
as  heterogeneous,  incapable  of  comprehensive  defini- 
tion in  any  other  terms  than  those  of  origin  ;  not  only 
must  he  divide  them  into  several  classes;  he  must  also 
admit  that  these  classes  fall  into  logical  if  not  chrono- 
logical order  of  development,  and  that  this  order  of 
development  is  a  traditional  epic  process  working  upon 
material  made  at  a  primitive  stage  not  quite  within  our 
sight,  but  well  within  our  sure  inference,  by  the  choral 
throng,  the  "people,"  and  not  by  the  individual  poet.    A 


FROM  ORIGINS  TO  EPIC  285 

review  of  the  foregoing  long  account  of  actual  English 
balladry,  here  brought  to  a  close,  will  surely  commend 
this  reasonable  view  of  ballad  origins;  and  the  study  of 
ballad  structure,  even  mere  comparison  of  early  stages  in 
a  "Babylon,"  a  "Maid  Freed  from  the  Gallows,"  with 
later  stages  in  the  Robin  Hood  cycle,  ought  to  place  this 
view  beyond  denial.  It  is  the  definition  by  origins,  with- 
out which  there  can  be  no  really  permanent  division  of 
English  literature  under  the  head  of  Popular  Ballads. 


CHAPTER   III 
THE  SOURCES  OF  THE  BALLADS 


R.  JOHNSON,  whom  we  have  just  re- 
claimed as  a  lover  of  ballads,  made  merry 
over  the  new  historical  and  comparative 
school  of  his  day.  "Hurd,  sir,"  he  remarked, 
"is  one  of  a  set  of  men  who  account  for  everything 
systematically;"  and  he  instanced  " scarlet  breeches "  as 
a  problem  not  too  trivial  for  Hurd's  study  of  origins. 
Now  the  main  source  of  ballads  cannot  be  revealed  by 
any  system;  for  oral  tradition  is  not  a  systematic  affair. 
It  is  unwritten,  unrecorded,  capricious  in  its  final  favors, 
the  very  shadow  of  chance.  Tenacious  enough,  not 
without  instinct  for  the  best,  it  runs  a  fairly  straight 
course  in  its  own  way;  but,  when  pursued  by  the  tran- 
scriber and  collector,  it  grows  self-conscious  or  else 
disappears  from  sight.  We  can  study  it  in  survivals; 
occasionally  it  can  be  spied  in  remote  lands  by  the  stu- 
dent of  ethnology;  but  for  English  and  Scottish  sources 
we  know  it  only  in  its  last,  uncertain  stage,  and  even 
that  is  now  at  an  end.  What  the  old  collectors  gleaned 
from  their  autumnal  field,  however,  and  what  one  can 
still  learn  from  analogous  processes  among  remote  and 
isolated  communities  throughout  the  uncivilized  world, 
are  ample  warrant  for  the  assertion  of  tradition's  an- 


THE  TRADITIONAL   PROCESS  287 

cient  pride  of  power.  Tradition,  which  could  make 
no  literary  form,  and  simply  accepted  the  ballad  as  its 
rhythmic  expression,  modified  that  form  to  suit  epic  needs, 
and  made  the  various  ballads  as  we  have  them.  We 
must  sunder  here,  as  elsewhere,  ballads  from  the  ballad. 
|JXhe  impersonal  character  of  our  ballads  ^  is  largely 
the  work  of  this  traditional  process.  The  ballad  itself, 
the  original  choral  and  dramatic  type,  fairly  well  pre- 
served in  "The  Maid  Freed  from  the  Gallows,"  derived 
its  impersonal  note  from  the  choral  fact,  from  the  con- 
sent of  many  voices,  and  from  the  dominance  of  dramatic 
interest,  so  that  even  individual  improvisation  was  ob- 
jective in  everyway;  but  there  was  quite  another  influ- 
ence at  work  in  the  slow  transmission  of  a  given  piece 
from  generation  to  generation  of  communal  memory.  It 
is  not  simply  the  changes  from  stage  to  stage,  not  simply 
the  local  variations,  though  these  are  interesting  enough 
in  the  study  of  a  ballad  in  many  versions;  it  is  the  effacing 
fingers  of  tradition  herself  which  sweep  gradually  away 
a  hundred  original  marks  and  make,  in  course  of  time,  a 
new  impersonality,  a  new  objectivity.  By  the  old  logical 
phrase,  the  ballad  gets  objectivity  in  intension  from  its 
origins  and  condition  of  form,  while  the  actual  and  sepa- 
rate ballads  get  objectivity  in  extension  from  successive 
stages  of  the  traditional  process.^ 

So  much  for  tradition  as  motive-power  of  the  ballads. 

*  See  also  above,  p.  66. 

^  See  Professor  Kittredge's  study  of  this  process  in  the  one-volume  ed. 
of  Child's  Ballads,  p.  xvii. 


288  THE  SOURCES  OF  THE   BALLADS 

What,  however,  of  their  material,  and  of  the  sources 
whence  it  derives  ?  Apart  from  this  great  background 
of  balladry,  this  enveloping  and  necessary  atmosphere  of 
it  and  its  condition  of  existence,  whence  come  the  ballads 
as  they  stand  ?  Their  sources,  to  be  sure,  have  been  to 
some  extent  indicated  in  the  previous  chapter.  We  have 
seen  the  rare  ballad  of  literary  origins,  so  far  as  its  narra- 
tive is  concerned,  taken  into  the  traditional  fold;  now  it 
changes  its  setting,  as  in  "Bonnie  Annie"  and  "Brown 
Robyn,"  —  if  these  be  really  derived  from  the  story  of 
Jonah,  —  and  now,  as  in  the  "  Judas "  group,  it  holds 
to  its  original  character  and  place.  We  have  seen  the 
chronicle  ballad,  based  on  fact,  now  in  the  immediate 
epic  style  of  "Otterburn,"  and  now  more  traditionally 
vague,  remote,  and  full  of  the  incremental  manner,  as  in 
"Mary  Hamilton"  and  "Captain  Car."  From  this  tradi- 
tional fact  one  passes  easily  through  legend,  with  vtigue 
and  varying  names  and  uncertain  locality,  to  almost 
wholly  dramatic  pieces  of  situation,  where  the  names 
mean  nothing  at  all,  as  in  "Babylon,"  or  are  left  out,  as 
in  the  old  riddle  ballads. 

But  there  are  wider  reaches  to  consider.  Stories,  parts 
of  stories,  episodes,  and  situations,  which  are  found  in 
our  versions,  are  also  found  in  the  Scandinavian,  the 
German,  the  French,  and  even  in  popular  literature  of 
eastern  and  southern  Europe.  Remoter  parallels  occur. 
How,  then,  is  all  this  to  be  explained  ?  Have  we  borrowed 
from  our  neighbors  ?  Or  are  they  and  we  using  a  common 
European    or   Aryan   fund    of   popular   tradition  ?     Or 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   SOURCES  289 

thirdly,  as  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  has  urged,  is  there  in  many 
places  spontaneous  and  independent  production  of  similar 
narratives  ?  Each  of  these  three  explanations  is  reasonable 
in  itself,  and  should  be  tested  for  the  particular  case;  the 
mistake  is  to  demand  that  one  of  them  must  explain  bal- 
ladry at  large.  The  first  is  easiest  to  apply,  but  needs  close 
study  of  facts;  hence  it  is  the  favorite  method  of  com- 
parative literature  to-day,  and  has  grown  contemptuous 
of  its  rivals.  Yet  one  may  venture  the  assertion  that  even 
this  debit-and-credit  theory  shows  signs  of  fatigue  from 
overwork.  The  second  explanation,  though  at  one  time 
defended  warmly  by  Gaston  Paris,  suffers  rather  from 
inactivity.  That  "common  fund  of  Aryan  popular  tradi- 
tion "  has  no  very  sure  rating  in  these  times;  it  is  involved 
in  the  bankruptcy,  as  some  view  it,  of  the  Primitive 
Aryan's  estate,  his  residence,  myths, —  library,  one  might 
put  it,  —  and  household  goods.  His  very  plow  has  been 
seized.  The  theory  of  mutual  borrowing  is  certainly  a 
nearer  way  for  the  student  of  ballad-material  than  as- 
sumptions of  common  descent  and  the  Aryan  patrimony. 
It  appeals  to  sensible  minds  and  general  experience. 
All  the  world  thrives  by  credit,  and  private  life  is  said 
to  be  merriest  on  such  a  base:  Borgt  der  Wirth  nicht, 
horgt  die  Wirthin ;  mid  am  Ende  horgt  die  Magd.  Yet  one 
does  yearn  now  and  then,  in  a  gross  way,  for  sight  of 
grains  or  minerals  as  they  wave  on  their  native  fields  or 
come  unstamped,  un worked  from  the  mine;  trade  pre- 
supposes production;  and  one  tires  of  a  perpetual  adjust- 
ment of  the  books  of  borrowing  unlimited,  and  of  no- 


290     THE  SOURCES  OF  THE  BALLADS 

thing  original  from  end  to  end  of  the  subject.  The  east 
is  vaguely  indicated  as  starting-point  in  this  series  of 
literary  credits;  but  it  is  too  far  a  cry  from  the  present 
point  of  investigation.  And  the  theory  proves  too  much. 
Even  as  M.  Cosquin,  in  his  "Contes  Populaires  de  Lor- 
raine," justly  derided  the  "vague  vapoureux  et  poetique" 
of  the  Grimms,  so  M.  Bedier,  in  "Les  Fabliaux,"  has 
quite  as  justly  derided  M.  Cosquin's  tendency  to  see  in 
every  story,  anecdote,  plot,  something  "come  from  the 
east  in  the  wake  of  the  crusades."  And  here,  surely,  is 
reasgn  for  at  least  a  respectful  hearing  of  Mr.  Lang's 
explanation.  We  have  said  in  a  previous  chapter  that 
some  few  primary  instincts  of  humanity,  crossing  some 
few  tendencies  of  mortal  life,  inevitable  clashings  of  fate 
with  the  heart  of  man,  might  well  result  in  action  and 
suffering,  in  deeds  and  events,  that  could  pass  directly 
into  song  without  taking  that  oriental  route.  Surely,  by 
M.  Bedier's  showing  there  is  room  for  a  little  spontaneity 
here  and  there  in  the  way  of  popular  song,  for  a  little 
home  production  and  a  few  native  wares!  Surely  as  with 
jest  and  plot  and  popular  tale,  so  with  ballads.  No  one 
denies  the  borrowing.  Where  the  story  or  episode  is  so 
striking,  so  crossed  or  complicated  in  motive,  as  to  put 
spontaneous  suggestion  from  daily  life  and  ordinary  hu- 
man passion  out  of  the  case,  and  where,  moreover,  this 
story  or  episode,  reproduced  with  fair  exactness  from  bal- 
lad to  ballad,  agrees  in  names  as  well  as  facts  with  some 
definite  narrative  of  long  standing  and  fame,  then  the  ulti- 
mate borrowing  is  certain,  and  the  explanation  of  patent 


THEORIES  OF  TRANSMISSION  291 

agreement  in  the  ballads  lies  between  farther  borrowing 
or  derivation  from  a  common  source,  —  not  the  Aryan  or 
European  stock,  but  let  us  say  an  older  ballad  from  which 
the  others  copy.     There  is  no  doubt  that  the  Shetland 
ballad  of  "King  Orfeo"  comes  from  its  classical  source 
through  the  medium  of  a  popular  tale  or  of  another  bal- 
lad. Oftener  the  borrowing  is  partial.  We  have  seen  how 
widespread  was  the  habit  of  singing  riddle  ballads  at  the 
dance.     How  this  riddle  ballad  itself  began,  whether  it 
was  "  invented  "  somewhere  and  passed  from  land  to  land, 
or  whether,  like  its  close  relative  the  flyting,  it  was  devel- 
oped out  of  conditions  common  to  our  humanity  at  cer- 
tain stages  of  culture,  is  a  question  not  to  be  asked  in  this 
place;  but  it  is  clear  that  a  definite  and  particularly  clever 
riddle,  like  a  good  story,  would  be  carried  about,  used, 
transmitted,  and  so  appear  in  ballads  of  many  climes  and 
times.    "Impossible  things"  would  have  the  same  fate; 
this  or  that  impossible  thing,  demanded  by  elf  or  maid, 
appears   in   the  German   and   the   English   ballad   and 
certainly  is  a  case  either  of   borrowing  or  of  derivation 
from  a  common  ballad  source.    This  for  the  riddles;  but 
an  epic  process  makes  capital  of  one's  desire  to  know 
all  about  the  person  who  guesses  them,  and  hence  rise 
the  widespread  and  various  stories  properly  grouped  by 
the  student  of  such  matters  as  "The  Clever  Lass"  or  the 
"Wise  Daughter  "  division ;  and  these  of  course  are  eagerly 
borrowed  everywhere.    On  the  other  hand,  the  asking  of 
riddles  at  a  dance,  combined  with  choral  and  dramatic 
features,  is  not  necessarily  a  borrowing  or  a  derivation. 


292     THE  SOURCES  OF  THE  BALLADS 

any  more  than  singing  and  dancing  of  a  given  people 
needed  to  be  imported  from  abroad.  Speaking  in  a  gen- 
eral way,  and  repeating  the  conclusions  gained  from  a 
study  of  ballad  structure,  we  may  regard  all  particularly 
epic  material,  when  not  based  on  a  historical  or  local  and 
legendary  event,  as  mainly  borrowed  or  derived  in  our 
English  and  Scottish  ballads,  while  the  dramatic  material, 
the  "action"  of  the  choral  throng,  the  situation  which 
appealed  to  those  improvising  singers,  and  even  that 
complication  of  kinship  or  of  social  relations  which  gives 
motive  to  so  many  of  the  old  ballads,  must  be  left  in  good 
part  to  the  original  side  of  the  account.  To  be  sure,  a 
good  story  might  be  used  for  choral  purposes,  just  as  a 
good  situation  was  developed  into  epic  ;  but  the  original 
and  main  division  is  a  fair  one.  Inasmuch,  however,  as 
our  ballads  have  all  advanced  well  out  of  the  choral  and 
improvising  stage,  and  in  the  majority  of  cases  are  dis- 
tinctly epic,  insisting  upon  the  narrative,  it  is  clear  that 
epic  interests  will  always  fill  the  foreground  in  the  study 
of  individual  ballads,  and  the  points  of  contact  with 
kindred  pieces  in  other  European  tongues  will  first  claim 
study  and  explanation.  Great  erudition,  a  nice  sense  of 
proportion,  and  the  instinct  for  right  paths  are  impera- 
tively needed  in  this  work;  for  many  a  day  the  student 
will  content  himself  with  the  splendid  comparative  studies 
made  by  Professor  Child  in  his  various  introductions,  or 
at  best  with  a  detail  or  two  added,  a  statement  here  and 
there  modified  or  withdrawn.  To  these  introductions  the 
reader  should  turn  who  wishes  to  know  how  far  the  narra- 


DISTRIBUTION    OF  GERMANIC    BALLADS    293 

tive  of  our  ballads  repeats  or  slightly  varies  the  narrative 
in  ballads  of  the  continent.  Meanwhile  Grundtvia:  thus 
sums  up  the  community  of  Germanic  ballads.^  They  are 
not  found  anyAvhere  in  their  original  form  and  original 
extent;  but  they  can  be  traced  in  Denmark,  Norway, 
Sweden,  Iceland,  the  Faroe  Islands,  Scotland,  England, 
the  Netherlands,  and  Germany.  Of  Scandinavian  bal- 
lads, a  larger  number  can  be  found  in  English  and  Scottish 
versions  than  in  German  and  Dutch.  England  and  Scot- 
land preserved  none  of  the  old  heroic  lays  which  are  so 
plentiful  in  Scandinavia,  and  which  in  Germany,  though 
unknown  to  the  ballad,  have  been  worked  into  national 
epic.  Mythic  stuff  is  scant  in  England,  unknown  in  Ger- 
many, but  plentiful  in  Scandinavia.  So  far  as  oral  tradi- 
tion goes,  the  Faroes  and  Norway  have  kept  the  most  and 
the  best;  but  Denmark  has  manuscripts,  three  or  four 
centuries  old,  of  traditional  ballads. 

It  is  clear  that  ways  of  accounting  for  these  facts  will 
differ;  but  the  facts  are  there.  For  derivation  many 
scholars  would  substitute  transmission,  and  would 
assume  a  system  of  exchange  far  beyond  Germanic 
boundaries.  The  matter  is  not  to  be  discussed  here  in  any 
such  range  of  the  literary  world;  but  something  may  be 
learned  from  a  study  of  the  English  ballads  themselves.^ 

From  the  nature  of  the  case,  it  is  clear  that  certain  inci- 

^  In  his  Introduction  to  Rosa  Warrens's  Danische  Volkslieder. 

^  It  is  worth  while  to  point  out,  with  the  aid  of  Professor  Herford's 
admirable  Studies  in  the  Literary  Relations  of  England  and  Germany  in 
the  Sixteenth  Century,  that  while  "wonderful  strange  news  from  Ger- 
many," reports  of  battles,  stories  of  murders  or  monstrosities,  what  not. 


294     THE  SOURCES  OF  THE  BALLADS 

dents,  complications,  an  unusual  outcome  of  the  usual, 
would  drift  about  and  find  a  subordinate  place  in  ballads 
of  many  lands.  These  incidents,  again,  fall  into  two 
classes,  one  general,  such  as  the  "recognition"  incident, 
which  may  be  said  to  belong  to  the  world's  common 
stock,  and  one  particular,  such  as  the  test  by  which  recog- 
nition occurs,  in  "Child  Maurice,"  by  sending  of  mantle 
and  ring;  in  "Hind  Horn,"  by  the  magical  information 
of  a  keepsake.  These  particular  incidents  are  naturally 
copied  from  a  definite  source,  and  are  not,  so  to  speak, 
floating  in  the  ballad  air.^  Again,  there  is  the  accused 
queen  or  wife,  and  her  rescue  by  some  David  of  a  cham- 
pion, even  by  a  child,  from  an  all-powerful  accuser;  how 
widely  this  story  is  spread,  how  it  stands  with  legend, 
romance,  history,  custom,  how  its  details  now  vary  and 
now  agree,  how  the  English  ballad  matches  the  Scandi- 
navian, and  how  it  differs,  may  be  learned  from  the 
respective   introductory   studies.^     Conclusions   are   not 

came  over  at  that  time  for  the  journalistic  ballad  press,  nothing  of  Ger- 
many's heroic  legend,  its  abounding  folk  song  and  really  popular  lyric, 
crossed  the  sea.  Heroes  of  magic  and  their  tales  of  horror,  Faustus  and 
Paracelsus,  were  eagerly  welcomed  in  England;  but  nothing  was  desired 
of  the  old  saga  and  myth  still  current  among  common  folk.  An  actual 
ballad  in  German  on  the  defeat  of  the  Turks  in  1593  was  entered  in  the 
Stationers'  Register  for  that  September.  On  the  spread  of  popular 
tales  by  the  agency  of  Jews,  see  L.  Wiener,  Yiddish  Literature,  pp.  25  f. 

'  Information  given  by  live  birds,  combined  with  the  virtue  of  rings 
and  other  ornaments,  may  have  begotten  this  idea  of  the  silver  larks. 
For  tests  of  chastity,  see  the  long  list  in  Child's  Index,  v,  472  f.  The 
ingenuity  of  these  presupposes  a  literary  or  epic  source  in  nearly  every 
instance. 

2  See  no.  59. 


COINCIDENCE  AND  DERIVATION  295 

uniformly  sure.  Coincidence  and  derivation  are  always 
scuffling  in  the  world,  of  letters,  and  it  is  now  and  then  a 
nice  matter  to  decide  which  is  in  the  right.  If  in  several 
ballads  a  man  or  maid  feigns  death  to  come  near  the 
beloved,  one  scents  a  "good  story"  and  allows  borrowing 
or  community  forthwith.  But  it  is  dangerous  to  run  down 
too  broad  a  trail  with  particular  and  narrow  purpose. 
There  is  a  brave  group  of  tragic  poems,  dramas,  episodes, 
in  which  the  conflict  of  two  duties  springing  from  kinship 
gives  at  once  the  initial  motive  and  the  last  throb  of  agony. 
What,  however,  have  Orestes  and  Hamlet  and  Rodrigue, 
and  even  Rudeger  in  the  "  Nibelungen,"  and  those  two 
Cumberland  boys  in  our  ballad,^  to  do  with  any  common 
auditing  of  accounts  in  literary  bookkeeping?  They 
belong  to  the  clash  of  human  lives  and  passions  with  inex- 
orable fate,  and  there  an  end.  One  warning  will  suffice. 
Simrock  grouped  the  Tristram  story,  Romeo  and  Juliet, 
and  Pyramus  and  Thisbe,  as  a  single  narrative  springing 
from  the  notion  of  hindrance  to  true  love.  They  are 
"hindrance"  stories.  The  hindrance,  as  other  details 
gather  about  the  different  versions,  splits  into  three;  in 
Tristram  it  is  a  husband,  in  Romeo  and  Juliet  it  is  a 
family  feud,  in  Pyramus  and  Thisbe  it  is  a  wall;  but 
there,  says  Simrock,  is  still  the  same  story  in  these 
separate  guises.  Whoso  wishes  to  follow  this  process 
with  ballads  has  a  lifetime  of  exhilarating  work  before 
him.  He  can  trace  analogies  as  remote  as  the  feigned 
madness  of  Hamlet  as  told  by  Saxo,  and  the  feigned 
^  Bewick  and  Graham. 


296     THE  SOURCES  OF  THE  BALLADS 

idiocy  of  Brutus  as  told  by  Livy,  handily  converted  into 
the  same  theme  for  a  student  of  Shakespeare's  sources. 
"Bewick  and  Graham,"  by  this  reckoning,  is  the  last  of 
its  line,  a  beggar  in  ragged  cloak,  but  descended  from 
them  of  Pelops  and  the  sceptred  pall,  —  that  is,  if  the 
plot  and  the  kin-tragedy  are  impossible  as  outcome  of 
conditions  of  English  life  three  centuries  or  more  ago. 
Mr.  Hardy  has  found  in  our  own  day  tragedies  of  iEschy- 
lean  keenness;  but  they  were  not  of  iEschylean  source. 
What  shall  one  assert,  for  example,  about  the  "relative- 
climax,"  say  in  the  situation  of  "The  Maid  Freed  from 
the  Gallows".?  Reasonably,  this:  a  widespread  group  of 
ballads  presents  the  common  trait  that  a  girl  in  dire 
stress  appeals  vainly  to  one  relative  after  the  other,  and 
finally  gets  her  salvation,  at  whatever  cost,  from  the 
nearest  and  dearest.  As  a  situation,  developed  under 
different  conditions  in  choral  song,  there  is  nothing  here 
that  could  not  occur  in  isolated  communities  everywhere 
without  hint  or  help  from  foreign  sources.  Where,  how- 
ever, there  is  identity  between  different  ballads  in  sundry 
epic  details,  in  the  development  of  this  situation  along 
certain  lines,  —  for  example,  the  fact  of  the  gallows,  the 
judge,  and  so  on,  —  then  it  is  folly  to  set  aside  so  obvious 
a  solution  as  common  derivation  from  a  parent  ballad, 
the  case  of  the  American  "Hangman's  Tree,"  and  the 
borrowing  of  striking  narrative  details  from  other  ballads 
or  from  epic  material  however  transmitted.  Again,  the 
excuses  for  John's  absence  in  the  "Twa  Brothers"  are 
the  same  in  kind  and  series,  but  differ  in  details,  from  one 


COINCIDENCE  AND   DERIVATION  297 

version  to  the  other;  they  are  clearly  the  same  ballad. 
Where  difference  in  detail  ceases  and  difference  of  origin 
begins  is  often  hard  to  decide.  In  many  cases  Professor 
Child  has  worked  out  these  perplexing  relations  with 
wonderful  accuracy  and  success;  his  sturdy  common 
sense,  too,  went  hand  in  hand  with  his  exquisite  literary 
tact,  his  technical  knowledge,  so  as  to  play  the  iconoclast 
at  need,  and  to  strew  the  way  here  and  there  with  such 
wrecks  as  the  Woden  theory  of  Robin  Hood  and  the 
celestial  origins  of  William  of  Cloudesley.  The  more  one 
can  learn  of  a  given  ballad  the  better,  no  matter  how 
wide  and  far  its  affiliations  may  go;  but  that  caution  of 
Mullenhoff  needs  to  be  kept  well  in  sight.  Every  song, 
he  said,  every  tale,  legend,  myth,  must  be  studied  pri- 
marily on  its  own  ground  in  its  own  local  associations. 
Grant  that  the  home-plot  has  had  its  proper  yield; 
grant  that  human  nature,  and  the  spontaneity  of  utter- 
ance in  stress  of  a  common  emotion  which  leads  to 
common  expression,  must  both  find  their  account  in 
any  theory  of  poetry  before  books ;  and  no  quarrel 
need  arise  in  the  literary  world  between  harvest-field  and 
warehouse. 

Borrowing,  derivation,  even  coincidence  itself,  are  not 
always  applicable  terms  for  the  analogous  traits  of  bal- 
ladry in  different  countries.  Earl  Brand,  it  is  true,  looks 
very  like  a  corruption  of  the  Scandinavian  Hildebrand, 
and  we  doubtless  are  here  on  the  trail  of  a  loan;  so,  too, 
with  the  identity  of  replies  in  Danish  and  English  ver- 
sions, "She  is  my  sick  sister;"    but  because  ladies  both 


298     THE  SOURCES  OF  THE  BALLADS 

in  Norland  and  in  Scottish  parts  are  discovered  in  their 
bowers  "sewing  the  silken  seam,"  we  should  not  jump 
to  a  like  conclusion.  Ballad  commonplaces,  idea  and 
expression,  belong  to  tradition  at  large.  Ghost  and  fairy, 
too,  traveled  the  high  road  in  those  days,  and  there  is  no 
need  of  tracking  them  to  private  haunts.  Transformation 
is  a  favorite  theme  of  folklore;  in  "Tam  Lane,"  which 
Burns  surely  did  not  invent,  one  finds  belief  in  the 
recovery  of  lost  mortal  shape  by  means  of  some  kind  of 
dipping,  whether  in  water  or  milk  or  what  not.  In  "The 
Great  Silkie,"  interchange  of  seal  and  man  is  a  quite 
local  affair.  The  main  idea,  change  of  shape  itself,  leads 
far,  and  carries  one  up  to  the  highest  type  of  poetic  myth 
as  well  as  down  to  the  simplest  and  rudest  narrative  told 
by  Uncle  Remus  himself.  Romantically  treated,  it  reaches 
the  group  represented  by  the  Wife  of  Bath's  Tale  in 
Chaucer,  and  by  a  few  ballads  on  the  same  general  theme. 
Here,  of  course,  is  a  particular  case.  General  notions  of 
this  kind  point  to  no  specific  source  for  a  given  ballad 
unless  its  details  go  beyond  the  general  notion  involved, 
as,  in  "Kemp  Owyne,"  with  the  three  kisses  and  the 
three  gifts.  So  it  is  with  the  idea  that  birds  talk,  warn  a 
criminal,  and  give  damaging  information,  as  they  do  in 
"Young  Hunting,"  or  act  as  occasional  penny-post  with 
the  "Gay  Goshawk,"  or  carry  grave  news  in  "Johnie 
Cock."  Curious  old  ideas  prevail  about  behavior  on  oc- 
casions such  as  childbirth  and  funeral.  Minor  supersti- 
tions abound  which  are  derived  from  a  lapsed  mythology 
and  a  superseded  habit  of  dealing  with  the  other  world. 


ANCIENT   CUSTOMS  299 

A  few  of  these  "remaines  of  gentilisme "  ^  may  be  worth 
remark.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  Aubrey  holds  the 
civil  wars  of  his  day  mainly  responsible  for  the  van- 
ishing of  old  superstition  from  England;  as  he  says 
quaintly,  "  no  suffimen  is  a  greater  fugator  of  phantosmes 
than  gunpowder."  But  if  supernatural  ballads  of  our 
tongue  have  been  lamentably  lost  in  tradition,  bits  of 
demonology  and  ghost-lore  are  scattered  about  the  sur- 
viving versions.  Some  are  not  "gentile,"  only  old,  like 
the  custom  of  casting  lots  to  discover  a  guilty  person  on 
shipboard,  the  gift  of  the  arm-rings  in  "King  Estmere," 
and  the  habit  noted  there  of  warriors  who  ride  their 
horses  into  hall.  The  comitatus,  old  Germanic  league  of 
chief  and  liegemen  in  mutual  bond  until  death  and 
beyond  it,  the  superb  note  of  "Maldon  Fight"  and  the 
Beowulf,  is  not  specifically  mentioned  by  ballads,  but 
has  left  its  mark  in  the  fidelity  of  Border  clansmen,  as  in 
"Jock  o'  the  Side,"  in  the  Robin  Hood  group,  and  of 
course  in  that  "poor  squire  of  land"  who  will  not  look  on 
while  his  captain  fights  in  "  Cheviot."  Sworn-brotherhood 
flames  up  nobly  for  its  last  effort  in  "Bewick  and  Gra- 
ham;" although  we  must  remember  that  the  three  heroes 
of  "Adam  Bell"  had  "sworn  them  brethren  upon  a  day." 
The  ordeal  is  met  in  various  forms,  —  fire  in  "Young 
Hunting,"  for  example,  as  well  as  battle  in  "  Sir  Aldingar ; " 
while  the  trail  of  once  fiery  heathen  oaths  moves  harm- 

'  Aubrey  intended  to  collect  more  than  remains.  "Get  the  song 
which  is  sung  in  the  ox-house  where  they  wassell  the  oxen,"  he  notes. 
Remains  of  Gentilisme  and  Judaism,  p.  9. 


300     THE  SOURCES  OF  THE  BALLADS 

lessly  over  the  ballads  in  Glasgerion's  famous  "oak  and 
ash  and  thorn"  and  the  incremental  stanzas  in  which 
Young  Hunting's  mistress  will  clear  herself,  —  now, 
"turning  right  and  round  about,"  by  the  corn,  and  again, 
with  the  same  contortion,  by  the  moon.  In  another  ver- 
sion, it  is  "by  the  grass  sae  greene"  and  "by  the  corn." 
In  the  "Twa  Magicians"  the  lady  swears  "by  the  mold," 
a  heathen  oath  like  the  appeal  in  Anglo-Saxon  charms 
to  mother  earth,  and  loses;  while  our  crafty  blacksmith 
swears  "by  the  Mass,"  and  wins.  A  commonplace  line, 
"The  king  looked  over  his  left  shoulder,"  is  referred  by 
Child  ^  to  superstitious  origins;  possibly,  as  used  in  "Sir 
Andrew  Barton"  and  elsewhere,  it  refers  to  some  such 
custom  at  court  as  makes  the  master  of  ceremonies  under 
Hrothgar,  in  the  Beowulf,  take  stand  for  messages  at  his 
monarch's  shoulder.  This  as  it  may  be.  A  very  poor  and 
suspicious  ballad  ^  preserves  the  curious  old  custom  of 
giving  an  injured,  forced,  or  unequally  mated  woman  the 
choice  of  sword  or  spindle;  she  could  take  the  sword, 
slay  the  man,  and  so  get  her  freedom,  or  she  could  take 
the  spindle  and  accept  her  lot.  Here  it  is  ring  for  spindle, 
—  whether  "to  stick  him  wi'  the  brand  or  wed  him  wi'  the 
ring."  Lady  Maisry  "  minded  "  thrice  to  the  brand ;  but 
of  course  "took  up  the  ring; "  and  all  the  ladies  who  heard 
of  it  said  she  was  wise.   A  corpse  betrays  the  murderer  by 

1  See  V,  286. 

^  No.  268.  One  archaic  feature  of  the  ballads  is  the  prominence 
given  to  a  sister's  son;  see  the  present  writer's  essay,  named  above, 
p.  182,  note. 


FOLKLORE   IN  THE    BALLADS  301 

beginning  to  bleed,  and  similar  prodigies  happen  repeat- 
edly; most  interesting  is  the  "singing  bone"  in  the  "Twa 
Sisters."  Dreams  are  not  very  frequent;  Douglas's 
"second  sight,"  Earl  Richard's  dream,  which  bodes  only 
flight,  not  death,  Robin  Hood's  vision  of  disgrace,  and 
the  chamber  full  of  swine,  the  bed  full  of  blood,  may  be 
cited  here.  When  a  man  dies,  —  in  a  late  ballad,  this,  — 
his  horses  go  wild  and  his  hounds  lie  howling  on  the  leash. 
Apparitions  are  fairly  common;  the  ghost  has  been  dis- 
cussed already,  but  the  elfin  knight's  horn  should  be 
heard,  seductive  as  that  gift  of  Oberon;  and  at  least  a 
touch  of  the  uncanny  is  in  that  warning  when  Lord 
Barnard's  horn  sounds  "away!"  in  Musgrave's  ears. 
Before  shipwreck  there  rises  to  the  sailors' gaze  a  mermaid^ 
with  comb  and  glass,  now  silent,  a  mere  sign,  and  now 
vocal  with  the  true  siren's  taunt:  — 

"  'Here's  a  health  to  you,  my  merrie  young  men, 
For  you  never  will  see  dry  land.'  " 

Another  sign  of  shipwreck  or  storm  is  the  new  moon  late 
in  the  evening,  —  quite  sufficient  as  portent  without  an 
auld  moon  in  her  arm.  Dealings  with  the  other  world 
have  been  already  recorded;  though  we  may  note  that 
Tom  Potts,  serving-man  as  he  is,  could  be  a  "  phisityan  " 
at  need;  "he  clapt  his  hand  upon  the  wound,"  we  are 
told,  and  "with  some  kind  of  ivords  stauncht  the  blood." 
Sleep  can  be  produced  by  charms;  the  venerable  runes 
are  still  potent  in  this  article,  though  they  are  mainly 
rationalized,  just  as  Peter  Buchan  makes  all  his  com- 
1  No.  289,  A,  2;   58,  J,  18. 


S02     THE  SOURCES  OF  THE  BALLADS 

municative  birds  into  parrots.     Stroking  troth  on  a  wand 

has  been  noted  in  "Sweet  WilHam's  Ghost;"    it  recurs 

in  "The   Brown  Girl."    Ancient  myth  from  Germanic 

days    still  lurks    in  the  reference    to  middle-earth,   an 

alliterative  phrase  of  "Sir  Cawline,"  and  in  those  "rivers 

aboon  the  knee"  or  even  "red  blude  to  the  knee,"  of 

"Thomas  Rymer." 

"  For  a'  the  bluid  that's  shed  on  earth 
Rins  through  the  springs  of  that  countrie," 

is  perhaps  popular  lore,  too,  with  a  glimpse  of  the  old 
Scandinavian  "water-hell;"  Professor  J.  A.  Stewart 
aptly  compares  with  this  verse  the  mention  in  Dante  of 
those  infernal  rivers  which  are  fed  by  human  tears.  One 
may  also  note  the  willingness  of  the  foresters  to  "ride  the 
fords  of  hell "  if  they  can  catch  Johnie  Cock.  Perhaps, 
moreover,  there  is  a  shred  of  myth  left  in  the  description 
of  a  "mountain  .  .  .  dreary  wi'  frost  and  snow"  which 
the  Demon  Lover  declares  to  be  his  proper  abode.  The 
red  cock  and  the  gray  that  call  back  the  wife's  three  sons 
at  Usher's  Well,  the  "milk-white  and  the  gray"  that 
summon  Sweet  William's  ghost,  represent  the  usual 
white,  red,  and  black  of  folklore,  and  have  near  relatives 
in  old  Norse  myth,  which  heard  the  crowing  of  the  dark- 
red  cock  as  warning  from  the  underworld.  In  another 
version  of  the  latter  ballad,  it  is  simply  the  ordinary  cock- 
crow and  the  "wild  fowl"  boding  day.  One  of  the  most 
persistent  echoes  of  an  old  idea  is  the  mention  in  many 
ballads  of  a  more  or  less  supernatural  light  that  is  given 
out  by  some  object.    Weapons  were  once  prone  to  this 


FOLKLORE  IN  THE    BALLADS  303 

service;  Valhalla  was  said  to  be  lighted  by  the  gleam  of 
swords,  and  readers  of  the  Beowulf  remember  how  the 
magic  brand  throws  radiance  about  that  hall  below  the 
sea  "even  as  when  heaven's  candle  shines  from  the  sky." 
In  "Salomon  and  Saturn,"  light  beams  from  the  barrow 
of  a  dead  warrior  where  still  lies  his  sword,  although  in 
the  Norse  lay  of  Helgi  it  is  the  spears  that  shine.  Magic, 
to  be  sure,  is  not  far  away;  men  were  wont  to  read  the 
future  in  their  gleaming  swords,  —  im  schwerte  sehen  ; 
but  for  the  most  part  this  illumination  is  contemporary. 
For  ballads,  the  little  champion's  sword  in  "Sir  Aldingar" 
casts  light  over  all  the  field ;  but  our  singer's  comment  is 
feeble  to  a  degree:  "it  shone  so  of  gilding."  A  late  Scot- 
tish ballad  is  quite  as  superfluously  rational  with  Charlie 
Macpherson's  sword  and  targe;  and  Lang  Johnny 
More's  armor  is  also  bright  in  mere  prose,  dimming  the 
king's  eye.  But  the  rings  on  the  fingers  of  Old  Robin's 
wife  are  better,  and  "cast  light  through  the  hall;"  and 
in  "Young  Lamkin"  we  are  with  good  magic  again. 
"  How  can  I  see  without  candle  }  "  asks  the  lady;  and  her 
false  nurse  replies  that  there  are  two  smocks  in  the  coffer 
as  white  as  a  swan;  "put  one  of  them  about  you,  it  will 
show  you  light  down."  Lamkin  cut  off  her  head,  and 
hung  it  up  in  the  kitchen :  "  it  made  a'  the  ha'  shine,"  —  a 
weird  bit  of  folklore.  The  light  from  clothes  became  a 
commonplace,  and  very  common  at  that,  copied  by  vulgar 
songs.  In  a  ribald  piece  *  about  Charity  the  Chambermaid, 

*  Bodleian,  4  Rawlin.,  566.   Another  of  the  deplorable  sort  has  a  line 
"wavers  like  the  wind,"  familiar  in  a  Scottish  version  of  Child  Maurice. 


304    THE  SOURCES  OF  THE  BALLADS 

her  poet  unexpectedly  tells  how  "such  a  light  sprung 
from  her  clothes,  as  if  the  morning-star  had  rose,"  — 
more  than  negligible  stuff,  were  it  not  for  its  witness  to 
the  influence  of  good  traditional  ballads  upon  these  out- 
cast things.  That  weapons  and  implements,  even  ships, 
are  addressed  as  persons  and  respond,  is  an  assumption 
at  the  very  heart  of  folklore  and  still  potent  in  ballad 
tradition.  Cospatrick's  sword  reveals  a  secret;*  but  we 
miss  in  English  versions  not  only  the  horror  and  audacity 
of  a  piece  like  the  Danish  "Hsevnersvserdet,"  where  the 
hero  has  to  restrain  his  sword's  avenging  thirst  for  blood 
by  naming  its  name,  but  also  such  vivid  personifications  as 
when  in  the  Beowulf  a  blade  "sings  eager  war-song," 
and  in  the  Finnsburg  fragment  "shield  calls  to  shaft." 

A  more  obvious  minor  source  of  composition  lies  in  the 
constant  use,  and  the  incidental  abuse,  of  phrases  that 
become  common  property.  Some  of  these  have  been 
noted  as  a  part  of  incremental  repetition.  Lists  of  ballad 
"formulas,"  not  very  satisfactory  so  far,  have  been  made 
in  Germany  and  compared  here  and  there  with  identical 
or  similar  forms  which  went  to  make  up  the  body  of  Ger- 
manic traditional  verse.  With  the  lapse  of  alliterative 
poetry,  however,  many  of  the  old  forms  lost  their  sugges- 
tive, almost  inevitable  quality,  and  disappeared.  Ballad 
commonplaces,  on  the  other  hand,  are  mainly  connected 
with  the  situation  or  the  event,  and  so  have  a  kind  of 
permanence;   their  parallels  in  older  verse  consist  less  in 

'  GilBrenfon,B,Q2:  — 

"  And  speak  up,  my  bonny  brown  sword,  that  winna  lie." 


STOCK  PHRASES  305 

epic  phrases  than  in  conventional  descriptions  of  battle 
or  the  like,  when  gray  wolf  of  the  wood,  dewy -feathered 
eagle,  and  horny-nibbed  raven  follow  the  path  of  war. 
To  be  sure,  the  ballads  have  a  store  of  mainly  alliterative 
formulas  that  answer  to  the  Germanic  tradition;  but  such 
a  formula  as  "kissed  her  baith  cheek  and  chin"  often 
takes  the  incremental  way :  — 

"'It's  kiss  will  I  your  cheek,  Annie, 
And  kiss  will  I  your  chin.'  " 

The  main  point  is  that  ballad  folk  do  the  same  things 
under  the  same  circumstances,  and  in  a  fairly  limited 
sphere  of  events;  hence  these  recurring  phrases,  sen- 
tences, stanzas,  which  may  well  claim  a  page  or  so  of 
quotation.  Child  Waters  and  Lord  Lovel  are  intro- 
duced as  combing  their  milk-white  steeds  and  making 
rude  remarks  to  their  sweethearts.  Chaucer's  squire,^ 
gracious  and  graceful  to  a  degree,  keen  to  win  his  lady's 
favor,  would  not  be  guilty  of  such  talk;  ballads  take 
the  traditional  and  popular  point  of  view  towards  the 
youth  of  high  lineage.  When  met  alone,  our  young  gen- 
tleman is  combing  his  own  yellow  hair.  Turning  to  his 
aristocratic  counterpart  among  women,  if  she  is  not  one 
of  twenty -four  maids  playing  ball,  we  find  her  in  her  bower 
alone  and  "sewing  the  silken  seam."  If  she  starts  off 
alone,  mainly  for  quite  serious  reasons,  she  is  sure  to 
kilt  her  green  kirtle  a  little  above  her  knee  and  braid  her 

*  This  critical  parallax,  so  to  speak,  which  one  gets  by  comparing  the 
ballad  way  with  Chaucer's,  is  invaluable  in  any  study  of  our  poetry  as  it 
passes  from  its  medieval  to  its  modern  state. 


306     THE  SOURCES  OF  THE  BALLADS 

yellow  hair  a  little  above  her  brow.  From  force  of  habit 
this  must  be  done  even  when,  like  Margaret,  she  pursues 
a  va.nishing  ghost.  She  summons  her  lover  when  she 
pulls  flower,  leaf,  nut,  in  the  grove.  Sometimes  she 
must  send  for  him  from  afar.  Pages  all  run  errands 
with  the  same  consistency  and  success,  getting  the  same 
promise  of  reward,  making  the  same  profession  of  devo- 
tion, swimming  when  they  come  to  broken  bridges,  and 
slacking  shoon  to  run  over  grass;  doing  things  mean- 
while which  are  quite  hard  to  understand,  such  as  bend- 
ing the  bow  at  rivers  and  using  it  for  a  pole-vault  over 
the  wall  at  their  destination.  They  are  apt  to  say  that 
they  have  come  through  "moss  and  mire."  The  knight, 
husband,  lover,  thus  summoned,  if  not  leaning  over 
his  castle  parapets  to  behold  both  dale  and  down,  is  at 
a  table  which  he  knocks  or  kicks  over  at  the  exciting 
news,  obtained  after  three  questions,  where  only  the  third 
is  serious.  If  the  news  be  false,  the  page  shall  be  hanged; 
if  it  is  true,  he  is  to  have  great  reward.  If  a  letter  is 
brought,  the  first  line  makes  the  hero  laugh  loud;  the 
second  or  third  calls  out  tears.  Straightway  he  has  three 
horses  saddled,  specifying  their  colors;  the  third,  pre- 
ferably white,  is  the  choice,  often  after  absurd  trials  of 
the  other  two.  Consistency  is  not  a  jewel  always  set 
in  these  phrases.  Child  Waters,  in  a  familiar  formula, 
will  have  his  new-born  son  washed  in  the  milk,  and  the 
mother  rolled  in  the  silk;  the  Cruel  Mother  would 
do  both  for  the  bonnie  babes  she  sees;  ^  but  Willy  of 
*  In  Prince  Heather,  A,  8,  wash  with  milk  and  dry  with  silk. 


BALLAD   CONVENTIONS  307 

Douglas  Dale,  fugitive  with  his  wife  in  the  greenwood, 
must  go  through  the  same  agreeable  but  impossible 
ceremony  for  his  son  and  heir.  Heroes  wipe  their 
swords,  not  always  appropriately,  on  grass,  or  straw, 
or  their  own  sleeves,  before  making  that  last  shrewd 
thrust;  what,  we  ask,  with  Cicero,  what  is  Tubero's 
sword  doing  meanwhile  ?  Fair  Annet  is  set  aside  for  her 
poverty;  but  she  goes  to  Lord  Thomas's  wedding  in 
the  correct  dress  of  richest  quality,  on  a  horse  capari- 
soned in  silver  and  gold,  and  with  four  and  twenty  good 
knights  and  as  many  fair  ladies  in  her  train.  Heroes 
and  heroines  are  always  yellow-haired,  and  blindingly 
blond,  as  becomes  their  Germanic  pedigree;  change 
to  the  brunette  type  is  a  fairly  sufficient  disguise.  The 
proud  porter,  who,  as  one  remembers,  so  irritated 
Matthew  Arnold  by  talking  drivel  not  strictly  Homeric, 
greets  the  supposed  harpers:  — 

"...  'And  your  color  were  white  and  redd. 
As  it  is  blacke  and  brown, 
I  wold  save  King  Estmere  and  his  brother 
Were  comen  untill  this  towne.'  " 

Hind  Horn  covers  up  his  fair  locks  for  disguise.  Even  the 
athletic  heroes,  even  Robin  Hood,  are  "white  as  milk;" 
their  dress  glitters,  mainly  red,  gold,  and  indefinitely 
splendid.  The  ladies  like  Faire  Ellen  often  wear  green; 
Scott  noted  that  illustrations  in  sundry  medieval  manu- 
scripts held  to  this  color.  But  there  is  plenty  of  glitter  here; 
Annet 's  dress  "skinkles."  Fair  Ellen,  as  Burd  Ellen  in  a 
Scottish  version,  wears  "the  scarlet  and  brown."  Willie's 


308     THE  SOURCES  OF  THE  BALLADS 

"milk-white  weed"^  is  startling.  Lady  Margaret's  fa- 
ther comes  "clothed  all  in  blue;"  Lady  Maisry's  "wear- 
ing the  gold  so  red."  Alliterative  phrases  like  "purple 
and  palle,"  "in  the  royal  red,"  are  conventional;  but 
^ohnie  Armstrong's  men,  and  Will  Stewart  and  John, 
are  described  more  in  detail;  the  latter  in  scarlet  red,  with 
black  hats,  feathers  white  and  gold,  silk  stockings,  garters 
golden  trimmed, and  shoes  "of  the  cordevine,"  or  Spanish 
leather.  This  care  for  details  leads  away  from  balladry, 
and  points,  though  from  remote  distance,  to  Chaucer.  The 
ballads  simply  give  a  touch  of  splendor,  as  with  persons 
who  are  loaded  with  gold  to  the  point  of  concealment, 
like  that  drowned  sister;  as  with  towers,  halls,  gates, 
gleaming  with  gold,  like  Child  Waters's  mansion  or  the 
hall  of  Hrothgar  in  the  Beowulf;  and  as  with  horses 
that  are  silver  shod  before  and  golden  shod  behind,  but 
are  not  further  described.  One  deals  with  types.  There 
is  no  attempt  at  the  concrete,  individual  portrait.  Occa- 
sionally contrast  is  employed:  two  heads  on  one  pillow, 
—  Lady  Maisdrey  like  the  molten  gold,  Auld  Ingram 
like  a  toad!  In  "The  Gay  Goshawk,"  how,  asks  the  mes- 
senger bird  of  the  lover,  how  shall  I  your  true-love  know 
from  another  ?  The  answer  is  not  explicit,  —  fairest  in 
England,  and  to  be  distinguished  out  of  the  conven- 
tional twenty-four  by  the  gold  on  her  skirt  and  on  her 
hair.  Another  version  at  this  point  falls  sheer  out  of 
balladry :  — 

*  No.  70.    See  the  absurd  increment  of  color  in  dress  quoted  above, 
p.  88. 


BALLAD   CONVENTIONS  309 

"The  red  that  is  in  my  love's  cheek 
Is  like  blood  spilt  among  the  snaw. 
The  white  that  is  on  her  breast-bone 

Is  like  the  down  on  the  white  sea-maw." 

This  will  never  do. 

The  "wee  pen-knife"  in  "Babylon,"  "a    little  wee 

sword"    of    "Young   Johnstone"    and    other    ballads, 

which  often  "hangs  low  down  by  the  gare,"  or  dress,  is  a 

curious  commonplace;^    men  carry  this  pen-knife  as  well 

as  women.     It  should  belong  by  rights  only  to  Child 

Maurice's  schoolmasters.   Babylon,  however,  stabs  home 

with  it;    the  cruel  mother  kills  her  babes  with  it;    while 

Clerk  Colvill  uses  it  merely  to  cut  cloth,  drawing  his  good 

sword  for  serious  work.   Fights  are  much  of  a  kind  in  the 

ballads,  and  are  seldom  described  in  detail.    Heroes  stop 

even  then  to  wipe  their  blades.    The  "awkward"  stroke 

finishes  after  long  struggle  in  sweat  and  blood;   even  the 

potter,  fighting  Robin  Hood,  makes  one  of  these  strokes 

with  his  staff.    Death  is  seldom  a  matter  for  lingering  or 

comment;    and   the  commonplace  of  giving  the  nobler 

or  better  of  two  dead  persons  the  sun-side  of  the  grave  is 

as  familiar  and  chivalrous  as  the  uniting  briar-and-rose 

from  tombs  of  parted  lovers  is  familiar  and  beautiful. 

The  favorite  characters  of  the  old  ballad  of  communal 

tradition  are  the  knight  and  the  lady,  wife  or  maid,  who 

'  These  phrases  are  so  common  ,as  to  be  used  without  thought  of 
consistency.  A  wee  pen-knife  may  be  "three-quarters  (of  a  yard)  long." 
So  a  babe  just  born  may  be  an  "auld  son"  (no.  64,  B,  6,  7);  true-love 
comes  to  be  any  sweetheart,  and  "false  true-love"  need  not  shock,  any 
more  than  "good"  Sir  Guy  or  "good"  William  a  Trent,  villains  both 
and  disturbers  of  greenwood  peace. 


310    THE  SOURCES  OF  THE  BALLADS 

were  in  the  focus  of  communal  view  and  represented  the 
fairly  homogeneous  life  of  that  day. 

All  these  commonplaces,  and  many  more,  all  the  super- 
stitions and  customs  and  sayings  of  the  folk,  were  in  the 
ballad  air,  and  involved  no  borrowing  as  we  now  under- 
stand the  term.  Stories  drifted  along  as  popular  tales  or  as 
scraps  of  learned  and  literary  record,  and  were  also  taken 
in.  Nothing  can  be  more  uncertain  than  the  actual 
sources  and  making  of  a  ballad ;  it  can  be  grouped  with 
other  ballads,  and  its  constituent  parts  may  be  paralleled 
from  a  hundred  near  or  remote  pieces  of  popular  litera- 
ture; but  just  how  and  when  and  where  it  was  put 
together  in  its  present  forms  is  seldom  to  be  known. 
The  date  of  making  is  hardly  ever  the  date  of  record. 
Ballads  recovered  from  late  Scottish  tradition  may  be 
older  in  fact,  as  they  certainly  are  older  in  structural  form, 
than  ballads  handed  down  in  manuscripts  three  or  four 
centuries  old.  And  a  further  cause  of  confusion  must  be 
noted :  not  only  is  a  ballad  changed  to  almost  any  extent 
in  tradition,  not  only  does  tradition  itself  largely  deter- 
mine the  matter  and  the  style,  but  there  is  still  the  possi- 
bility, often  enough  fact,  of  parts  of  one  ballad  fusing 
with  parts  of  another  and  so  forming  a  piece  which  in 
course  of  time  may  come  to  its  own  individual  rights.  It 
is  this  peculiar  quality  of  tradition  which  makes  the 
classifying  of  ballads  diificult  enough,  even  without  refer- 
ence to  source  and  date,  and  which  renders  nugatory  so 
many  judgments  of  the  critic  who  undertakes  to  settle 
questions  of  general  origin  and  particular  derivation  by 


FUSION  OF   BALLADS  311 

the  laws  of  artistic  poetry.  We  must  not  forget  how  much 
the  ballad,  and  the  dance  out  of  which  it  sprang,  meant 
for  an  unlettered  community,  and  how  many  strands 
must  be  unraveled  in  this  complicated  web  of  traditional 
verse.  Even  where  feudal  conditions  are  invaded  by 
modern  ways  almost  to  the  point  of  extinction,  as  in  the 
Western  Islands  at  the  time  of  Johnson's  visit,  the  old 
impulses  live  on.  Clan  equality,  homogeneous  life,  the 
fact  that  all  eat  at  the  same  board  and  bear  the  same 
name,  keep  ancient  custom  alive.  "We  performed,  with 
much  activity,"  says  Boswell,^  "a  dance  which  I  suppose 
the  emigration  from  Sky  has  occasioned.  They  call  it 
America.  Each  of  the  couples,  after  the  common  in- 
volutions and  evolutions,  successively  whirls  round  in 
a  circle  till  all  are  in  motion;  and  the  dance  seems 
intended  to  show  how  emigration  catches  till  a  whole 
neighborhood  is  set  afloat."  It  is  no  very  far  cry  back 
to  the  Frisian  pirates;  and  while  the  Celtic  ballad  is  not, 
one  would  like  to  know  more  of  the  words  that  high- 
landers  and  islanders  must  once  have  sung  to  their 
choral  and  dramatic  performances.^  Add  tradition  to 
these  choral  elements,  and  we  have  factors  for  the  ballad 

»  Ed.  Hill,  V,  277. 

^  J.  Darmesteter,  in  English  Studies,  London,  1896,  p.  208,  after 
defining  Ossian  as  "a  combination  of  two  independent  epic  cycles, 
welded  together  against  nature  .  .  .  prettyfied  and  airified  to  suit 
eighteenth  century  tastes,"  goes  on  to  give  "a  fine  example  of  the  essen- 
tial distinction  between  Primitive  poetry  and  Romantic  poetry"  by  a 
study  of  "  the  Irish  Helen  whom  the  ancient  epics  call  Derdrin."  Primi- 
tive poetry  is  not  the  term.  We  should  have  the  old  Celtic  songs  of  the 
dance,  not  the  work  of  their  epic  bards,  to  get  at  the  primitive  stuff. 


312     THE  SOURCES  OF  THE  BALLADS 

which  cannot  be  treated  by  modern  rules  of  the  poetic 
game.  What,  for  instance,  of  the  text  ?  Mindful  of  the 
great  critical  achievements  in  classical  and  other  litera- 
ture, scholars  have  tried  to  restore  the  "original  text" 
of  a  traditional  ballad.*  As  has  been  already  asked,  how 
can  there  be  such  a  thing  as  this  original  text  ?  There  are 
texts,  versions,  now  of  manuscript  authority  and  now 
from  singing  or  recitation;  but  the  very  conditions  of  the 
case,  the  postulate  that  every  one  of  these  ballads  must 
derive  from  tradition  of  the  people,  absolutely  bars  this 
idea  of  a  single  and  authoritative  source.  The  task  of  the 
editor  is  to  follow  back  each  of  the  versions  to  its  par- 
ticular origin,  and  to  separate  from  it  any  "improve- 
ments" or  changes  due  to  interference  from  whatever 
hand.  But  when  he  has  reached  the  dairymaid  or  the 
"old  man,"  who  got  it  by  natural  process  in  its  traditional 
course,  he  has  done  all  he  can  do  for  it;  he  has  traced  it 
to  popular  tradition.  Of  a  large  group  of  variant  versions, 
he  selects  the  best,  the  oldest,  those  which  agree  with 
the  kindred  ballad  in  other  tongues,  and  prints  them  all 
in  the  order  of  preference.  That  is  the  only  "classical" 
treatment  of  ballads.  For  anthologies  the  different  ver- 
sions may  be  combined  into  one;  but  this  task  is  difficult, 
and  the  best  of  the  versions,  as  representative,  will  in  most 
cases  serve  the  reader's  turn. 

Fidelity  to  traditional  report  is  the  collector's  main 
virtue,  although  his  opportunity  is  now  mainly  gone. 
The  great  harvest  was  reaped  in  Scotland  a  century  or 

'  See  above,  p.  267. 


BALLAD   COLLECTING  313 

more  ago;  but  in  colonial  and  remote,  undisturbed  nooks 
a  degenerate  version  is  now  and  then  to  be  found,  — 
like  the  North  Carolina  texts  of  "  The  Maid  Freed  from 
the  Gallows"  and  "The  Wife  of  Usher's  Well."  But 
the  ballad  has  vanished  from  its  old  haunts.  Sir  George 
Douglas  has  noted  that  at  the  annual  dinner  of  the  border 
shepherds,  held  at  Yetholm  in  the  Cheviots,  these  old 
ballads  are  heard  no  more;  they  have  found  a  precarious 
refuge,  he  says,  among  fisher-folk  in  the  obscure  little 
havens,  but  it  is  evident  that  their  time  is  past.^  In  the 
eighteenth  century  they  were  still  heard  everywhere  in 
rural  and  remote  communities.  Percy  relied  not  only  on 
his  folio,  but  on  friends  and  correspondents  whom  he 
inspired  with  the  collector's  zeal.  Over  thirty  ballads 
collected  for  him  in  this  way  are  now  in  the  Harvard 
College  Library.  Scott,  of  course,  had  an  even  larger 
staff  of  helpers,  and  both  his  published  and  manuscript 
collections  are  beyond  price.  Before  him,  David  Herd, 
distinguished  for  his  fidelity  to  the  material  in  hand,  his 
unwillingness  to  improve  or  change,  had  done  splendid 
service.  Mrs.  Brown  ^  of  Falkland  is  the  best  known  of  all 
the  reciters;  her  versions  are  straight  from  tradition,  and 
were  set  down  about  1783.  Sharpe,  Motherwell,  Kinloch, 
and  others,  were  helpful  in  the  good  cause;  and  in  our 
own  day  the  diligence  of  Mr.  Macmath,  who  supplied 

^  See  G.  L.  Kittredge's  sketch  of  Mr.  Child's  hfe,  prefixed  to  the  large 
edition,  p.  xxviii.  "...  little  or  nothing  of  value  remains  to  be  recov- 
ered in  this  way."    See,  also,  The  Bitter  Withy,  printed  above,  p.  228. 

^  She  was  born  in  1747,  and  learned  most  of  her  ballads  before  1759. 
So  Mr.  Macmath's  information,  Child,  i,  455. 


314     THE  SOURCES  OF  THE  BALLADS 

so  much  of  the  new  material  to  Professor  Child,  should 
be  gratefully  borne  in  mind.^ 

While  the  ballad  remained  wholly  a  traditional  affair, 
the  treasure  of  the  humble,  there  was  no  danger  that  it 
would  be  adapted  to  purposes  of  the  literary  world. 
Towards  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century,  however, 
after  Percy's  collecting  and  Herder's  preaching  had  dig- 
nified these  fugitive  songs,  Cinderella  was  brought  forth 
triumphantly  from  her  nook,  and  was  even  exalted  above 
her  sisters.^  Tradition,  too,  had  begun  to  lose  its  vitality; 
and  there  was  now  room  as  well  as  incitement  for  the 
repair,  the  imitation,  the  counterfeit.  Of  these,  indeed, 
the  crime  of  counterfeit  was  far  less  damaging  than  the 
peccadillo  of  repair.  Collectors  themselves  found  it  hard 
to  keep  their  improving  hands  off  the  material  which 
they  gathered  from  so  rude  a  source.  Allingham,  a  born 
poet  and  fine  critic,  changes  "Bonnie  James  Campbell," 
and  puts  an  intrusive  stanza  of  his  own  into  "The  Wife 
of  Usher's  Well."  Scott  himself  retouched  old  versions, 
set  them  dancing  where  they  limped,  or  seemed  to  limp, 
and  in  one  case,  "Kinmont  Willie,"  really  made  up  a 
new  ballad  by  the  best  model  in  the  world.  "Katharine 
Jaffray,"  too,  has  many  marks  of  Sir  Walter  on  it.   Burns 

^  Joseph  Ritson  ought  to  be  canonized  by  lovers  of  the  ballad,  if  only 
for  his  indomitable  zeal  in  editing  and  his  passionate  accuracy.  Full  of 
evil  were  his  days,  and  his  end  was  dark  indeed;  but  his  services  to  sound 
learning  should  never  be  forgotten. 

^  This  whole  movement  has  been  traced  by  the  present  writer  in  the 
Introduction  to  his  Old  English  Ballads  ;  there  is  no  need  to  repeat  the 
journey. 


BALLAD  EDITING  315 

had  a  little  commerce,  not  very  extensive,  with  "Tam 
Lane; "  and  no  one  can  question  that  all  these  ballads  are 
good.  In  general,  however,  it  may  be  said  that  literary 
imitation  of  the  ballad,  patchwork  or  piece,  is  a  failure; 
and  the  possible  exceptions  to  this  rule  —  Mr.  Andrew 
Lang  informs  me  that  he  would  count  with  them  such  a 
piece  as  old  Elspeth  sings  ^  about  "the  red  Harlaw"  — 
only  emphasize  the  wide  difference  between  poetry  of  the 
people  and  poetry  of  art.  In  times  before  Scott,  editorial 
improvement  was  common  enough.  Percy's  feats  and 
Ritson's  rage  are  notorious;  but  it  must  be  remembered 
that  something  of  the  sort  was  needed  to  secure  readers. 
Show  touches  of  "elegance,"  and  you  could  beguile 
the  man  of  taste  into  appreciation  of  the  rough  and  the 
sincere.  Even  Herder  served  up  his  ballads  and  folk 
songs  along  with  soliloquies  from  Shakespeare.  The 
famous  Percy  Folio,  rescued  from  the  office  of  lighting 
fires  in  Humphrey  Pitt's  mansion,  was  written  about 
1650;  it  was  probably  a  faithful  transcript,  but  even  here 
allowance  must  be  made  for  considerable  changes  in  the 
passage  from  tradition  to  record,  so  that  with  the  actual 
text  before  us,  and  Percy's  iniquities  swept  away,  we  are 
not  dealing  with  absolute  tradition.    The  later  group  of 

^  In  the  fortieth  chapter  of  The  Antiquary.  "'It's  a  historical  ballad,' 
said  Oldbuck  eagerly, '  a  genuine  and  undoubted  fragment  of  minstrelsy. 
Percy  would  admire  its  simplicity,  Ritson  could  not  impugn  its  authen- 
ticity.' "  The  prose  thrown  in  by  Elspeth  is  interesting;  and  Scott's 
account  of  the  "shrill,  tremulous  voice  .  .  .  chanting  ...  in  a  wild 
and  doleful  recitation"  is  no  fiction.  He  had  heard  such  voices  often 
singing  just  such  ballads. 


316     THE  SOURCES  OF  THE  BALLAD 

collectors,  just  now  noted,  who  took  down  ballads  from 
singing  and  recitation,  learned  fairly  well  the  lesson  of 
fidelity  and  literal  report;  but  here  again  was  danger, 
even  with  such  a  splendid  recorder  as  Herd,  that  abbre- 
viation, forgetfulness,  distortion,  and  outright  fabrication, 
on  the  part  of  singer  or  reciter,  should  play  havoc  with  the 
genuine  traditional  ballad.  Fabrication  counted  for 
much  in  the  performances  of  that  "wight  of  Homer's 
craft"  whom  Buchan  hired  to  collect  popular  ballads  in 
the  north  of  Scotland,  and  a  spurious,  silly  affair  like 
"Young  Ronald"  is  indefensible;  but  it  may  be  said  that 
this  fabrication,  however  poor  in  quality,  held  fairly  well 
to  the  structural  and  traditional  form.  As  one  can  never 
tell  where  a  bit  of  genuine  traditional  verse  is  mingled 
with  the  wight  Rankin's  own  making,  the  versions  have 
been  admitted  by  Professor  Child;  it  is  true,  moreover, 
that  the  blind  beggar  has  had  more  blame  than  he 
deserved.  His  potations  are  fearfully  thin;  but  it  is  real 
"Scotch "  which  one  does  taste  in  them,  and  he  knew  both 
the  people  and  their  songs.  He  ought  not  to  have  been 
"paid  by  the  piece."  Buchan 's  own  feats  of  compilation, 
to  be  sure,  must  not  go  uncursed;  his  long  version  of 
"Young  Waters"  is  called  by  Mr.  Child  "a  counterfeit 
of  the  lowest  description."  But  on  the  whole  Peter  did 
far  more  good  than  harm. 

Other  versions  of  ballads  from  recitation  in  Scotland 
seem  sound;  barring  the  accidents  already  named,  they 
should  represent  the  traditional  ballad  at  the  stage  which 
tradition  had  reached  in  the  early  eighteenth  century 


BALLAD  FORGERIES  317 

under  conditions  of  a  fairly  homogeneous  rural  life.  What 
they  do  not  directly  represent  is  the  primitive  and  original 
ballad  itself.  That  is  not  to  be  recovered,  though  it  can 
be  inferred.  The  normal  type  of  the  popular  ballad  is 
something  which  one  must  make  up,  as  a  composite  pho- 
tograph, from  the  best  old  manuscript  versions  and  the 
versions  of  soundest  oral  tradition.  The  printed  sources, 
to  be  sure,  vary  greatly  in  value,  and  open  the  door  to  far 
more  serious  chances  of  corruption;  but  in  many  cases 
they  help  rather  than  hinder  the  composite  process. 
Patient  sifting  and  testing  of  all  this  material  leads  to 
sure  results,  and  enables  the  true  ballad  critic  to  throw 
out  a  vast  amount  of  alien  stuff.  What  he  keeps  is  the 
real;  but  this  real  is  not  always  good.  Mr.  Henderson 
makes  it  the  reproach  of  Professor  Child's  collection  that 
"the  chaff  is  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  wheat."  Possibly. 
But  the  chaff  is  wheat-chaff,  not  sawdust  or  other  sham; 
and  this  is  the  triumph  of  the  edition.  P'or  the  matter  of 
wheat  and  chaff,  of  good  and  bad,  any  selection  of 
genuine  ballads  must  be  an  affair  of  purely  subjective 
judgment. 

Forgeries  and  imitations  need  not  detain  us  long. 
Everybody  has  heard  of  Lady  Wardlaw's  "Hardyknut,"  ^ 
which  appeared  as  early  as  1719,  and  bewrays  itself  at 
once  to  the  ballad-reader.    Clever  Scottish  women  of  the 

1  See  curious  remarks  by  T.  Warton,  Observations  on  the  Fairy 
Queen,  2ded.,  i,  156  (1762),  on  this  "noble  old  Scottish  poem"  which 
he  now  hears  was  written  "near  fifty  years  ago"  by  a  lady.  "The  late 
lord  president  Forbes  was  in  the  secret,  and  used  to  laugh  at  the  decep- 
tion of  the  world." 


318    THE  SOURCES  OF  THE  BALLADS 

later  eighteenth  century  wrote  more  than  one  song  which 
was  accepted  as  popular;  but  now  and  then  a  woman  of 
humbler  parts  undertook  this  amiable  fraud.  Among 
the  pamphlets  in  the  Bodleian  library  ^  is  "The  Knyghte 
of  the  Golden  Locks;  an  Ancyent  Poem,  Applicable  to 
the  Present  Times,  Selected  from  many  others  in  the 
Possession  of  Mrs.  Morgan."  "Mary  Morgan  "  remarks, 
by  way  of  preface,  that  though  this  ballad  is  in  no  collec- 
tion, she  sincerely  believes  it  "to  be  an  original."  It  is 
fit,  she  thinks,  for  these  times  when  men  are  going  to  war. 
She  has  kindly  "altered  obsolete  words,"  but  gives  three 
stanzas  in  their  "primitive  orthography."  It  is  deplorable 
stuff,  and  has  all  the  marks  of  a  poor  forgery;  but  in 
these  premises,  as  Sir  Walter  proved  later,  one  may  "lie 
like  a  gentleman." 

" '  O  happy  horse,'  the  ladye  cryd. 
And  strok'd  his  rainbow  neck." 

Absolutely  nothing  happens  in  the  ballad  except  ortho- 
graphy —  of  the  primitive  kind.  Mrs.  Morgan  says  she 
learned  to  love  Percy's  "Reliques"  when  she  was  visiting 
Admiral  Sir  Joseph  Knight,  "whose  daughter.  Miss 
Cornelia  Knight,  has  distinguished  herself  by  her  Con- 
tinuation of  Dr.  Johnson's  'Rasselas.' "  Besides  ladies,  the 
clergy  could  take  part  in  this  pious  fraud;  witness  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Lamb's  "Laidly  Worm,"  which  he  calls  "a 
song  five  hundred  years  old,  made  by  the  old  Mountain 
Bard,  Duncan  Frasier,  living  in  Cheviot,  a.  d.,   1270. 

'  G.  Pamph.  1740,  no.  26.    It  is  dated  Wisbech,  1799. 


BALLAD  IMITATIONS  319 

From  an  ancient  manuscript."    But  Mr.  Lamb  was  no 
Chatterton.^ 

Imitations  differ  from  forgeries  only  in  the  matter  of 
morals.  Scott  has  been  mentioned  for  his  successful  work; 
some  harmless  and  not  very  effectual  imitations,  made  by 
himself  and  Leyden  and  C.  K.  Sharpe,  he  inserted  in  his 
"Minstrelsy."  If  these  men  failed,  and  they  did  fail,  who 
should  succeed  ^  Again,  there  is  the  general  imitation  of 
the  type,  such  as  began  feebly  enough  and  at  very  long 
range;  as  early  as  Prior  it  is  to  be  noted,  and  it  appears 
in  differing  degrees  of  merit  as  the  work  of  Shenstone, 
Collins,  Goldsmith,  and  the  notorious  Mallet.  Unlike 
either  of  these  ways,  the  collector's  and  the  amateur's,  was 
that  delightful  robbery  of  a  stanza  or  so  from  tradition, 
by  Scott  or  Burns,  so  as  to  get  a  motive  for  a  song.  Thus 
Campbell,  collecting  airs,  "got  in  the  south  country," 
from  recollections  of  a  lady's  singing,  two  traditional 
stanzas  of  a  ballad  known  more  completely  in  other  ver- 
sions;  the  first  stanza  ran  thus:  ^  — 

" '  Why  weep  ye  by  the  tide,  ladye, 

Why  weep  ye  by  the  tide  ? 
I'll  wed  ye  to  my  youngest  son 

And  ye  sail  be  his  bride. 
And  ye  sail  be  his  bride,  ladye, 

Sae  comely  to  be  seen,'  .  .  . 
But  aye  she  loot  the  tears  down  fa' 

For  John  o'  Hazelgreen." 

'  Chambers  has  a  formidable  list  of  forged  ballads,  including  some 
of  the  best  pieces.  The  conclusions  of  Professor  Veitch  on  this  subject. 
History  and  Poetry  of  the  Scottish  Border,  ii,  81,  seem  quite  beside  the 
mark. 

2  No.  293,  E,  1. 


320     THE  SOURCES  OF  THE  BALLADS 

"O  whaten  a  man  is  Hazelgreen  ?"  the  weeping  maid  is 
asked.  "  Long  arms,  shoulders  broad,  sae  comely,"  she 
says,  and  lets  the  tears  fall  on.  Scott  keeps  the  stanza, 
changes  the  hero's  name,  and  makes  his  own  charming 
song,  —  far  more  effective  for  modern  taste  than  this 
particular  piece.  But  the  song  is  not  a  ballad.  Haunting 
lines  can  beget  whole  poems;  we  know  what  the  ballad- 
fragment,  "Child  Roland  to  the  dark  tower  came,"  could 
do  for  Browning,  and  what  provocation  there  is  in  many 
a  refrain :  — 

"  For  we'll  never  gang  doun  to  tlie  broom  nae  mair." 

Only  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  romantic  and  senti- 
mental turn  of  these  modern  poems  was  quite  foreign 
to  the  ballad  whose  fragment  inspired  them.  Even  the 
objective  character  —  hiihsch  objectiv,  said  mocking 
Heine  —  of  the  literary  ballad,  the  "Agincourts,"  the 
"Hohenlindens,"  the  "Revenges,"  the  "Herve  Riels," 
and,  above  all,  of  the  refrain  ballad  such  as  Rossetti 
wrote  so  effectively  and  Calverley  parodied  with  his 
"butter  and  eggs  and  a  pound  of  cheese,"  even  this 
severe  but  conscious  impersonality  is  far  removed  from 
the  communal  note  of  tradition.  The  old  songs  were 
made  by  the  people  and  handed  down  by  the  people;  no 
individual  author,  going  about  his  work  as  an  artist  in 
poetry,  can  make  hiS  work  impersonal  in  the  old  sense. 
Once  again  be  it  said  that  "popular"  as  a  definition  by 
origins,  as  conveying  the  idea  that  ballads  were  really 
made  by  the  people,  does  not  mean  a  single,  initial  pro- 


BALLAD  IMITATIONS  321 

cess  of  authorship  on  the  part  of  a  festal  throng.  Such  a 
conception  involves  a  contradiction  in  terms  and  flouts 
common  sense,  assuming  the  choral  foundation  and  reject- 
ing that  epic  process  which  is  tradition  itself.   The  ballad 


is  a  conglomfiiate  of  choral,  dramatic,  lyricj_and  epic  ele- 
ments^liiclLJLrfi^duenow  to  some  suggestive  refrain,  now 
to  improvisation,  now  to  memofyV iioWto  individual  in- 
vention, and  are  forced  into  a  more  or  less  poetic  unity  by' 
the  pressure  of  tradition  in  long  stretches  of  time.  In  this 
sense  they  represent  no  Individual,  but  are  the  voice  of 
the  people;  and  successful  imitation  of  them  by  any  indi- 
vidual, however  gifted  and  sympathetic  he  may  be,  is  a 
task  hardly  to  be  done.  The  great  poems  of  the  world  are 
far  greater  than  the  greatest  ballads;  but  no  poet  has 
ever  had  the  power  to  compete  with  popular  tradition  on 
its  own  ground.  Art  can  create  far  beyond  the  beauty  of 
sea-shells,  and  on  occasion  can  exactly  reproduce  them; 
but  it  cannot  fashion  or  imitate  their  murmur  of  the  sea. 


CHAPTER   IV 
THE  WORTH  OF  THE  BALLADS 

N  this  world  the  question  of  values  is  impera- 
tive; and  an  account  of  the  popular  ballad 
must  be  rendered  in  terms  of  its  achieve- 
ment and  its  essential  worth.  True,  what 
is  popular  is  not  every  man's  affair.  "Study  the  people," 
said  Goldsmith  to  Gray,  quoting  Isocrates  and  deprecat- 
ing the  exclusive,  learned  appeal  of  the  Odes;  but  "I  do 
not  love  that  word  'people,'"  is  Bacon's  way.  In  these 
opinions,  however,  there  is  nothing  either  bad  or  good 
for  balladry.  Bacon  was  thinking  of  the  rabble;  Gold- 
smith had  what  we  call  the  public  in  his  mind;  but  in  the 
vital  days  of  the  ballad,  it  dealt  with  that  collective  power 
which  is  now  absorbed  with  other  forces  in  the  idea  of 
society.  Social  realization  in  art  can  by  no  conception  be 
called  common  or  unclean  even  now,  but  must  rather  be 
regarded  as  drawing  the  individual  out  of  his  more  sordid 
self;  what  is  bad  in  art  is  really  antisocial.^  If  this  is  true 
in  days  when  the  individual  has  achieved  such  a  command 
of  the  field,  it  must  have  meant  everything  for  primitive 
times  and  for  the  more  homogeneous  community.  What 
qualities,  then,  would  pass  into  the  ballad  from  its  com- 

'  Some  excellent  consideration  of  this  point  will  be  found  in  the  early 
pages  of  M.  Faguet's  Propos  Litteraires,  Paris,  1902. 


THE   DIFFERENCES  323 

munal  and  social  origins,  and  what  would  it  fail  to 
receive  ?  Briefly  stated,  the  ballad  may  be  said  to  possess 
the  advantages  and  disadvantages  of  a  cumulative  appeal 
to  the  emotion  of  a  throng,  and  to  lack  the  advantages 
and  disadvantages  of  suggestive  appeal  to  individual 
imagination.  These  lines  of  difference  are  not  hard  and 
fast,  but  they  will  serve;    and  they  may  be  tifst^  by 

certain  facts.  ' — -"^ 

Writing  to  a  friend,  Taine  once  declared^  that  art  is  a 
general  idea  put  into  the  most  particular  form.  As  for 
the  poets,  instead  of  fine  distinctions  in  color  and  outline 
to  express  this  idea,  one  finds  in  them  a  word,  a  metaphor, 
a  sound,  a  suppression,  a  turn  of  phrase,  which  can  be 
discovered  nowhere  else.  Here,  in  the  aflSrmation  of 
modern  poetry,  is  plain  negation  of  the  more  primitive 
ballad.  The  ballads  are  conventional  and  formal  to  a 
degree;  their  chief  marks  are  the  refrain,  that  constant 
repetition  of  the  text,  those  recurrent  commonplaces. 
Rhythm  itself,  the  communal  and  conventional  essence 
of  poetry,  appeals  to  certain  modern  poets  as  too  vulgar 
a  form;  and  they  oppose  to  it  centrifugal  devices  of  every 
sort.  But  before  poetry  grew  to  be  the  cult  of  the  unusual, 
rhythm  was  the  only  vehicle  for  pleasant  or  beautiful  or 
even  entertaining  words.  John  of  Ireland,  who  wrote 
"the  earliest  extant  example  of  original  literary  prose  in 
Scots,"  apologizes  in  quaint  phrase;  "thocht  my  language 

•  Correspond.  (May,  1854),  ii,  47.  One  thinks  of  the  advice  to  poets 
by  Eumolpus  in  Petronius:  efjugiendum  est  ah  omni  verborum  ut  iia 
dicam  vilitate;  et  summendae  voces  a  plebe  summoiae. 


324  THE   WORTH   OF  THE   BALLADS 

be  nocht  in  Ryme  nor  plesand  to  part  of  pepil,"  he  says, 
it  will  nevertheless  appeal  to  the  religious  sort  by  reason  of 
its  matter.  In  brief,  repetition  of  sound,  word,  phrase, 
structure,  is  the  soul  of  balladry,  and  is  precisely  what 
modern  poetry  disowns.  Suppose  that  Dante  should 
repeat  "we  read  no  more  that  day"  for  his  next  pair  of 
lovers,  and  his  next,  repeating  the  event!  Suppose  that 
Shakespeare  put  Hamlet's  soliloquy  into  the  mouths  of  all 
his  tragic  heroes!  In  ballads  we  must  renounce  every 
aesthetic  surprise  of  form  and  phrase.  One  searches  them 
in  vain  for  that  vivid  line,  that  memorable  word,  which 
flash  out  of  the  situation  and  the  act,  marking  them  for- 
ever and  belonging  to  them  alone.  Ballads  are  full  of 
action,  and  they  give  us  situations  quite  as  strong  as  that 
of  "The  Duchess  of  Malfi"  in  which  the  brother  stands 
over  his  murdered  sister;  but  where  is  "Cover  her  face; 
mine  eyes  dazzle;  she  died  young,"  or  anything  approach- 
ing such  a  verse  ?  It  is  impossible  to  note  high-water 
marks  of  ballad  achievement,  as  Matthew  Arnold  was  fain 
to  do  for  poetry  itself,  by  quoting  test  or  tonic  passages. 
Perhaps  the  appeal  of  Fair  Ellen  to  the  surly  Child,  or 
her  lullaby,  both  quoted  on  a  preceding  page,  might  go 
for  a  specimen  to  justify  our  praise;  but  these  are  inade- 
quate, and  any  detached  portion  is  inadequate.  The 
whole  ballad  is  the  thing.  One  would  rather  bid  the 
seeker  after  excellent  differences  of  the  ballads  to  read 
"Child  Waters"  itself,  "Babylon,"  "Lord  Randal," 
"Spens,"  "Glasgerion,"  "The  Wife  of  Usher's  Well;" 
to  read  "  Johnie  Cock,"  '*Robin  Hood  and  the  Monk," 


METRE   AND    DICTION  325 

"Jock  o'  the  Side,"  the  "Cheviot;"  and  to  sing  out  loud 
and  bold  whatever  else  commends  itself,  like  the  lilt  of 
"St.  Stephen"  ^  or  the  crooning  air  of  the  "Queen  of 
Elf  an 's  Nourice."  One  must  live  one's  way  into  balladry, 
must  learn  to_lpve  it  as  a  whole  and  not  by  elegant 
extrax!tS  Such  passages  as  one  can  call  vivid  and  mem- 
orable to  some  degree  are  recurrent,  traditional,  un- 
fixed, the  very  opposite  of  particular.  Even  the  affecting 
close  of  "The  Twa  Brothers"  is  found  elsewhere.  The 
force  of  ballad  style  is  centripetal,  emotional,  communal, 
cumulative,  not  suggestive,  not  intellectual  and  centrifu- 
gal. What  is  true  of  the  style,  the  invention,  is  also  true 
of  the  external  form.  Ballad  airs  differ,  of  course, 
although  a  severe  simplicity  marks  them  all;  but  the 
rhythmical  scheme  shows  no — attempt- -at- -originality. 
Ballad  metres  are  almost  uniform;  the  range  is  very 
slight;  and  they  can  all  be  reduced  to  variations  of  the 
immemorial  verse  of  four  accents  ^  which  savage  poetry 

'  "I  sing  it  all  over  the  house,"  said  Professor  Child  to  the  present 
writer  with  regard  to  this  ballad.  Readers  should  note  an  admirable 
summary  of  Child's  obiter  dicta  on  ballads  and  the  ballad,  collected  from 
his  various  introductions  and  notes,  by  Professor  Walter  M.  Hart, 
printed  in  the  Publications  of  the  Modem  Langtiage  Association,  xxi, 
755  ff.  The  great  scholar's  judgment  is  almost  invariably  unassailable. 
Perhaps  in  the  passage  (v,  299)  where  he  calls  the  Fire  of  Frendraught 
and  The  Baron  of  Bracldey  "fairly  good,"  but  adds  that  these  and  others 
composed  in  the  seventeenth  century  are  not  to  be  compared  with  Mary 
Hamilton,  one  feels  a  desire  to  lift  Bracldey  clean  out  of  its  bracket, 
though  not  to  the  level  of  Hamilton. 

^  Preserved  in  the  old  two-line  ballad  stanza,  and  not  very  remote 
in  the  septenarius,  however  this  may  be  related  to  the  sacred  Latin 
verse. 


326  THE  WORTH   OF  THE   BALLADS 

prefers  and  which  may  even  lie  behind  later  develop- 
ments like  the  hexameter  and  the  Saturnian.  The  verse- 
scheme  js-simple ;  and  has  not  the  resources  even  of 
regular  alliterative  verse,  which  is  capable  of  so  much 
emphasis  and  change.  In  rime  there  is  little  variety  and 
no  originality;  a  few  obvious  combinations  do  yeoman 
work.  ^Alliteration,  common  enough,  is  mainly  a  matter 
of  traditional  phrases ;  as  conscious  effort  it  is  rare,  found 
chiefly  in  the  chronicle  ballads  and  in  an  occasional  out- 
burst like  the  "fat  fadge  by  the  fire"  of  "Lord  Thomas." 
The  vocabulary,  too,  is  slender;  perhaps  a  "disserta- 
tion "  will  one  day  count  all  the  ballad  words.  Inversions, 
meant  as  inversions,  and  antitheses  are  practically  un- 
known; there  is  as  little  conscious  testing  of  the  possibili- 
ties of  surprise  in  the  order  as  in  the  choice  of  expression. 
Climax  is  never  calculated;  if  it  occurs,  it  is  merely  the 
end  of  the  singer's  material ;  and  to  modern  notions, 
the  singer  sometimes  fails  to  stop  where  he  ought  to  stop, 
—  as  in  Percy's  beautiful  speech  over  Douglas.  So,  too, 
divergencies  from  common  usage  ^  are  generic;  it  is 
simply  the  traditional  ballad  way,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
superfluous  pronoun,  found  even  in  French:  — 

"Le  fils  du  roi,  il  a  jure." 

A  corresponding  peculiarity,  omission  of  the  relative,  as 

'  Ballads  taken  from  the  recitation  of  servants  and  nurses,  when  not  in 
marked  dialect,  are  often  disfinjured  with  unj^rammatical,  silly,  and  vul- 
gar phrases.  This  is  not  surprising.  The  surprising  fact  is  that  so  many 
of  the  traditional  ballads  are  quite  free  from  these  disfigurements,  and 
shpw  a  simple  dignity  of  language  quite  their  own. 


EPITHET   AND   FIGURE  827 

in  "I  holp  a  pore  yeman,  with  wrong  was  put  behind," 
and  "sent  it  to  Sir  Patrick  Spens,  was  walking  on  the 
strand,"  is  not  peculiar  to  ballads,  though  characteristic. 
The  leaps  and  omissions  of  narrative'liave  been  noticed 
already;  they  form  no  intentional  feature  of  style,  but 
spring  from  the  choral  origins  of  the  ballad  and  are  of  the 
essence  of  its  tradition. 

The  same  centripetal  tendency,  the  same  failure  to 
suggest  and  to  provoke  the  imagination,  rule  in  what  is 
called  figurative  language.  All  the  epithets  are  timid,, 
traditional,  general;  they  do  not  commit  themselves. 
Any  water  is  "wan."  Ladies  are  "gay,"  but  so  are  rings. 
The  hero  bears  himself  "like  a  king's  son,"  and  the  maid 
is  "as  leal  as  the  moon  shines  on."  A  wife  is  as  true  "as 
stone  in  the  castle  wall;"  but  a  different  case,  "as  dead 
as  the  stones  in  the  wall,"  seems  to  take  the  faithful 
quality  away.  Comparisons  as  a  whole  are  few  and  of 
the  smallest  range;  "feet  as  white  as  sleet"  is  the  only 
touch  of  surprise.  Lady  Barnard's  eye,  turned  on  Little 
Musgrave,  is  "bright  as  the  summer  sun,"  and  out- 
laws in  their  forest  are  "light  as  leaf  on  linden;" 
but  these  are  .common  stuff.  There  is  no  attempt  to 
"heighten"  style  as  an  individual  and  artistic  feat.  Con- 
vention is  followed  through  thick  and  thin,  even  when  it 
is  at  odds  with  the  fact. 

"  O  wha  woud  wish  the  win'  to  blaw, 
Or  the  green  leaves  fa'  therewith  ? 
Or  wha  wad  wish  a  leeler  love 
Than  Brown  Adam  the  Smith  ? 


328  THE  WORTH   OF  THE   BALLADS 

"His  hammer's  o'  the  beaten  gold, 
His  study  's  '  o'  the  steel. 
His  fingers  white  are  my  delite. 
He  blows  his  bellows  well." 

The  conventional  hero  of  ballads  is  bound  to  show  the 
milk-white  skin  somewhere,  and  his  effects  must  bristle 
with  gold;  hence  our  preposterous  blacksmith.  Again, 
the  introduction  of  him  by  those  pretty  but  irrelevant 
lines  about  wind  and  falling  leaves  only  sets  off  the  general 
poverty  of  ballads  in  descriptions  of  nature,  a  field  where 
poets  of  all  time  have  followed  Taine's  formula  of  the 
general" in  the  particular  with  extraordinary  zeal,  and 
where  metaphor  and  simile  and  hyperbole  have  achieved 
their  worst  and  their  best.  This  expression  of  nature  in 
new  or  startling  phrase  is  half  of  poetry,  by  the  modern 
idea,  and  a  good  two-thirds  of  favorite  extracts  and 
familiar  quotations.  But  the  ballads  take  nature  for 
granted,  and  say  little  or  nothing  about  it.  Delight  in  the 
May  morning,  in  the  greenwood,  the  deer,  the  birds,  has 
been  noted  already  along  with  other  particulars  of  the 
Robin  Hood  life,  and  the  chronicle  ballad  elsewhere 
ventures  a  modest  allusion;  but  in  the  typical  ballad  of 
situation  and  dialogue  and  refrain,  nature  plays  no  part. 
Landscape  is  ignored.  We  should  like  to  know  more  of 
that  Silver  Wood  mentioned  in  "Child  Maurice"  and 
"  Jellon  Grame,"  for  there  is  a  waft  of  myth  in  it;  but 
not  a  word  is  said.  So  with  Wearie's  Well.  The  "unco 
land,  where  winds  never  blew  nor  cocks  ever  crew,"  does 

'  Stithy,  anvil. 


NATURE  329 

little  for  us;  and  the  scant  notes  of  True  Thomas's  jour- 
ney through  the  other  world  are  disappointing.  Who 
nowadays  does  not  remember  the  description  of  Grendel's 
abode  in  the  Beowulf,  the  wolf-haunted  crags  and  windy 
nesses,  the  wild  stream  hurrying  underground,  and  then 
the  mere  itself,  so  full  of  horror  that  even  the  hounded 
stag  chooses  to  be  torn  to  pieces  on  its  brink  rather 
than  to  plunge  for  safety  into  its  waves  ?  Here  is  strong 
imaginative  suggestion;  where  is  it,  even  faintly,  in  the 
ballads?  We  should  have  something  of  this  sort  about 
Wearie's  Well,  about  other  uncanny  places,  if  the  indi- 
vidual poet  were  at  work  with  his  inexhaustible  treasure 
of  comparison,  metaphor,  glimpse,  and  hint,  derived  from 
the  processes  of  nature.  "Child  Waters"  offers  the  most 
tempting  chances  for  ordinary  description,  but  they  are 
not  taken;  once,  indeed,  there  is  mention  of  the  broom, 
but  it  is  only  to  make  a  rime  for  that  increment  which  the 
Robin  Hood  poets  would  have  thrown  out,  possibly  sub- 
stituting a  real  touch  of  description. 

"  All  this  long  day  Child  Waters  rode, 
Shee  ran  bare  fFoote  by  his  side ; 
Yett  was  he  never  soe  courteous  a  knight 
To  say,  Ellen,  will  you  ryde  ?  • 

"  But  all  this  day  Child  Waters  rode, 

Shee  ran  barffoote  thorow  the  broome ; 
Yett  he  was  never  soe  courteous  a  knight 
As  to  say.  Put  on  your  shoone." 

The  water  which  they  cross  is  specified  vaguely  as  flowing 
"from  banke  to  brim;"    at  the  great  hall  "of  red  gold 


330  THE  WORTH  OF  THE   BALLADS 

shine  the  gates,"  and  so  it  is  with  the  tower,  —  intolerable 
stretch  of  conventional  splendor.  That  is  all.  Not  an 
adjective  or  epithet  or  description  stays  with  us.  When 
7" romantic"  scenes  are  mentioned,  they  are  shorn  of  all 
romance.  Moonlight  is  as  little  regarded  as  daylighT 
for  imaginative  purposes.  The  shut  of  day  means  no- 
thing for  ballads  but  the  coming  of  dark  —  no  flush  of 

sunset  —  no 

"...  reaped  harvest  of  the  h'ght 
Bound  up  in  sheaves  of  sacred  fire,"  — 

no  pomp  of  stars;   the  night's  face  holds  no  "huge  cloudy 

,  symbols  of  a  high  romance;"   and  sunrise  itself,  save  for 

j;  that  scant  courtesy  in  "The  Monk,"  is  unhonored  and 

'  unsung.    With  the  same  slight  allowance,  too,  it  may  be 

said  that  the  seasons  pass  unnoticed.    Even  in  "Spens," 

,  where  the  matter  is  vital,  it  is  only  "this  time  of  the  year; " 

elsewhere  it  is  either  mere  calendar,  as  in  "Car"  and 

"Otterburn,"  or  else  the  conventional  manner  of  getting 

the  story  under  way,  as  in  "Sir  Andrew  Barton,"  which 

throws  in  a  songbird  or  so,     A  refrain  —  "Aye  as  the 

gowans  grow  gay"  —  can   start   imagination;    but  the 

flora  and  fauna  of  refrains  lack  tenue. 

"As  the  dew  flies  over  the  mulberry  tree," 

is  not  reassuring;   while 

"  The  broom  blooms  bonnie  and  so  it  is  fair,"' 

is  anticlimax.  Moreover,  since  the  method  of  balladry, 
as  of  early  epic,  is  cumulative  and  not  suggestive,  since 
its  art  is  to  give  details  and  not  provoke  the  imagination 


NATURE  331 

into  creating  them,  one  must  be  careful  not  to  assume 
such  a  provocative  intention  where  none  is  meant.     In 
Motherwell's  weird  little  version  of  "Sheath  and  Knife," 
the  sisters  ride  down  to  the  valley  "when  the  green,  green  i 
trees  are  budding  sae  gaily,"  hunt  and   hawk  together,', 
till  at  last  one  of  them  is  buried  in  a  wide  grave;  then,  — 

"  The  hawk  had  nae  lure,  and  the  horse  had  nae  master. 
And  the  faithless  hounds  thro'  the  woods  ran  faster." 

This,  if  genuine,  should  not  set  us  dreaming;    it  is  only 

fact,  not  a  beckoning  of  romance,  not  a  "horn  in  'Her- 

nani.' "   It  was  a  lover  and  his  lass,  or  rather  one  of  them 

yearning  for  the  other,  that  put  nature  to  work  in  the 

provocative,  imaginative  way.    At  first  the  connection  is 

as  vague  as  in  an  Italian  "  flower  of  the  vine,"  or  what 

not:  — 

"  O  western  wind,  when  wilt  thou  blow 
That  the  small  rain  down  can  rain  ? 
Christ,  that  my  love  were  in  my  arms, 
And  I  in  my  bed  again  ! " 

But  it  rapidly  grew  definite.  Daybreak  songs  led  to  some 
of  the  finest  touches  of  description;  dawn,  parting  the 
lovers  in  Wolfram's  great  lyric,  is  a  bird  of  prey  striking 
fiery  talons  through  the  cloud.'  But  the  rise  of  lyric  out 
of  folk  song  is  apart  from  our  subject ;  ballads  tread  the 
epic  path. 

The  explanation  of  all  this  is  very  evident.   Ballads  are 
communal,  because  they  spring  from  the  community  in 

^  The  late  ballad,  Greij  Cock,  no.  248,  noted  above  as  an  aube,  has 
no  touch  of  this  sort. 


332  THE  WORTH  OF  THE  BALLADS 

their  choral  origins  and  appeal  to  it  in  their  traditional 
career.  Their  source  and  their  object,  collective  emotion, 
is  centripetal  in  its  influence;  and  is  open  only  to  the 
cumulative  efl^ect,  responding  readily  to  the  familiar, 
the  repeated,  to  what  is  both  present  and  near.  It  asks 
the  same  emotional  impression  over  and  over  again;  it 
refuses  the  series  of  fresh  and  varied  intellectual  sugges- 
tions, as  well  as  all  efforts  to  detach  it  from  its  object. 
These  qualities,  modified  in  some  degree,  are  taken  over 
into  the  great  epics  and  give  the  objective  cumulative  note. 
Epic  poetry,  however,  even  in  such  crude  forms  as  the 
"Gest  of  Robin  Hood,"  begins  to  show  its  centrifugal 
tendencies,  not  only  by  modifying  this  cumulative  appeal 
of  facts  by  the  omission  of  refrain  and  verbal  iteration, 
but  in  positive  comment  on  the  facts  and  in  marked 
artistic  control.  The  mitial.  word,  "listen,"  —  emphat- 
ically "lithe  and  hsten,  gentlemen,"  —  is  significant 
enough.  The  chorus  is  now  discharged,  and  the  ways  of 
the  chorus  are  in  disrepute.  Our  poet-reciter  or  singer 
is  already  on  the  steps  of  the  pyramid,  and  looks  over 
his  hearers'  heads.  The  Homeric  rhapsode,  indeed,  has 
gone  so  far  as  to  appeal  to  a  distinct  intellectual  effort  on 
the  part  of  these  hearers,  making  them  detach  them- 
selves from  the  story  far  enough  to  look  down  on  it 
from  the  flight  of  a  simile,  or  from  the  vantage-ground 
of  wide  emotional  comment.  This  separable  quality  the 
ballads  never  show;  while  modern  epic  poems  stretch 
it  to  its  limit.  In  quest  oi^  the  particular  our  modern 
and  artistic  poetry  must   be  capable  of  detachment  at 


OBJECTIVITY  333 

every  turn;  only  so  can  it  gain  its  splendor  and  sweep 

of  phrase. 

"  Flat  as  to  an  eagle's  eye  ^ 

Earth  lay  under  Attila," 

is  Mr.  Meredith's  impressive  opening  of  a  poem  where 
the  centrifugal,  particular,  and  detaching  method  exactly 
meets  the  definition  of  Taine.  Hundreds  of  verses  flash 
and  dart  from  every  corner  of  the  poetic  heaven  to  light 
up  the  bridals  of  Attila  and  the  tragedy  of  this  single 
night.  Eleven  stanzas,  on  the  other  hand,  for  a  contrast 
of  method,  tell  without  a  trope,  without  a  conscious  turn 
of  phrase,  without  a  suggestion  of  the  wider  world  or  of 
times  past  and  to  come,  but  in  their  own  conventional 
leap-and-linger  style,  the  story  of  "Sir  Patrick  Spens," 
the  tragedy  of  his  summons,  his  journey,  and  his  end. 
This  traditional  bit  of  verse,  smooth  as  it  has  grown,  holds 
to  the  cumulative  and  undetached  habit  of  genuine  ballad 
style.  From  first  to  last  it  is  at  the  heart  of  the  action  and 
never  attempts  to  view  that  action,  whether  by  stuff  or 
by  phrase,  by  figure  or  by  comment,  from  without.  It 
moves  in  a  straight  if  redoubled  line  to  the  end,  —  the 
Scots  lords  lying  at  Sir  Patrick's  feet,  half  over  to  Aber- 
dour,  fifty  fathoms  under  sea.  So,  to  be  sure,  Tennyson 
left  his  Revenge :  — 

"  And  the  little  Revenge  herself  went  down  by  the  island  crags 
To  be  lost  evermore  in  the  main." 

But  this  objective  note  is  not  the  objective  note  in  ^  ' 
"Spens."  Mr.  Kipling,  too,  is  objective  and  direct;  in  VC 
his  "Danny   Deever,"   a  stirring  poem,  jlialogue   and i    ^ 


334  THE  WORTH  OF  THE   BALLADS 

refrain  do  all,  but  the  method  is  still  suggestive,  not 
cumulative.  "What's  that  a-whimperin'  overhead?" 
and  "I've  drunk  his  beer  a  score  of  times,"  effective  as 
they  are,  are  impossible  in  the  ballad  of  remote  choral 
origins  and  direct  traditional  source.  The  difference  is 
obvious.  All  impersonal  poetry  has  "its  eye  on  the 
object;"  but  a  ballad  is  the  object  itself,  and  needs  no 
contrasts  in  time  or  place.  A  modern  poet  bears  down 
upon  his  theme,  circles  it,  and  takes  it  finally  by  siege 
and  storm.  When  he  has  it,  he  does  not  keep  it;  he  whips 
his  readers  away  from  it  in  order  that  they  may  come 
back  to  it  by  another  path.  He  stirs  abrupt  intellectual 
flights,  and  sets  a  series  of  trysts  in  dreamland.  Mr. 
Meredith  tells  almost  nothing  of  that  wild  bridal  night 
as  early  epic  would  tell  it;  but  what  provocation  lies  in 
his  flash  of  trope  and  figure,  his  hints,  his  shadows  as  from 
flying  clouds  of  reminiscence,  to  make  one  see  this 
Attila  and  feel  the  tragedy  of  the  end !  The  conqueror  is 
resting  from  war;    that  is,  — 

"  On  his  people  stood  a  frost,"  — 
and  the  army  is 

"  Like  a  charger  cut  in  stone." 

Suggestion  after  suggestion  lights  the  pomp  of  bridal 
feasting,  shades  a  contrast  of  the  conquered,  submissive 
world  without,  throws  a  deeper  glare  on  the  figures,  on 
the  bride,  Attila,  the  warriors,  — 

"  Those  rock-faces  hung  with  weed." 
and  again  the  conquest,  again  feast,  bride,  king.  Where 


EPIC    METHODS  335 

is  the  story?  Nearly  two  hundred  verses  glitter  by  be- 
fore the  action  begins,  and  then  it  only  seems  to  begin. 
When  the  climax  comes,  it  is  a  picture  by  sheer  simile: 
the  chieftain  dead,  — 

"  Square  along  the  couch  and  stark 
Like  the  sea-rejected  thing,"  — 

and  "that"  — 

"  Huddled  in  the  corner  dark. 
Humped  and  grinning  like  a  cat."  ^ 

Every  epic  method  is  suited  to  its  own  time.  Ballads 
hold  attention  to  the  story  by  repetition  of  its  main 
details;  they  leap  or  linger,  but  move  straight.  Ger- 
manic verse,  tenacious  of  its  method  for  a  good  thousand 
years,  as  one  may  guess,  combined  repetition  with  varia- 
tion, moving  in  zigzag.  Modern  poets  move  round  their 
subject  in  narrowing  circles,  and  must  not  repeat.  More 
than  this.  They  are  bound  to  startle  by  unexpected 
phrase  and  idea,  like  changing  lights  on  the  rhythmically 
moving  form  of  the  dancer.  In  that  shift  of  colors  we 
may  well  forget  the  meaning  of  the  dance  itself;  but  we 
like  the  color;  and  suum  cuique  is  an  old  word.  What 
does  one  remember  from  the  fine  ballad  of  "Robin  Hood's 
Death".?  The  story.  What  does  one  remember  from 
that  exquisite  and  even  noble  poem,  Tennyson's  "Morte 
d'Arthur"  ?  The  setting  of  it,  the  colors  and  sounds,  the  H" 
haunting,  provocative  suggestion,  the  charm  of  words.  | 
Each  is  open  to  praise  as  to  blame;  but  the  praise  is  what 

*  Compare  the  picture  of  Judith  and  Holofernes,  as  drawn  by  Anglo- 
Saxon  art. 


336  THE  WORTH   OF  THE   BALLADS 

abides.  Poetry  is  tested  by  the  strongest  and  not  by  the 
weakest  links  of  its  chain ;  and  to  call  one  of  these  poems 
drivel,  the  other  mere  flashlight  and  innuendo,  is  to  tell 
the  half-truth  which  is  a  lie. 

Corresponding  to  this  outer  circle  of  differences  in  style 
and  form  is  the  inner  circle,  the  conception  of  character 
and  events.  Here  the  ballads  can  bear  no  comparison 
with  even  early  epic  art.  Their  events  have  no  sweep,  no 
slow  and  inexorable  sequence;  a  narrow  scene,  central, 
unchanged,  or  perhaps,  as  in  the  "split  situation,"  two 
scenes  without  any  careful  connection,  must  suflice. 
Dramatic  in  origin,  in  setting,  in  dialogue,  in  splendid 
tragic  possibilities,  the  ballads  absolutely  fail  to  develop 
what  is  now  regarded  as  the  supretne  dramatic  fact,  — 
character.^  Robin  Hood  looms/up  in  fairly  personal 
guise;  but  Robin  is  centre  of  a  cycle  and  has  felt  the  epic 
influences.  He  has  been  accounted  for  in  ancestry,  birth, 
and  breeding;  his  whole  story  has  been  told,  retold, 
belied  by  sordid  contaminations,  rescued;  his  death  is 
nobly  sung.  As  with  Beowulf,  hints  are  given  about 
Robin's  habits,  personal  strength,  tastes.  Contrast  the 
ballad  of  situation  and  its  limited  range  of  character 
in  a  "Babylon"!  One  gets  not  even  a  motive,  not  a 
shred  of  fact,  for  solution  of  this  tragedy;  take  it  or 
leave  it,  —  but  the  situation  is  the  thing.  A  lightning- 
flash  reveals  it,  and  the  dark  straightway  swallows  it  up; 
who  can  study  poses,  faces,  expression,  anything  but  the 

'  See  the  already  quoted  analysis  of  a  Danish  ballad  and  its  heroic 
epic  predecessor  by  Professor  Ker  in  Epic  and  Romance,  pp.  147  flf. 


THE  ESSENCE   OF   BALLADRY  337 

group  and  that  swift  climax  of  a  merely  hinted  complica- 
tion ? 

Still  less  is  the  chance  for  comment,  the  artistic  aside, 
the  comparison  with  larger  issues.  There  is  no  proverbial 
wisdom — although  the  singerof  "Robin  Hood  and  Guy" 
quotes  proverbs — in  the  older  choral  ballads,  and  none  in 
the  ballad  of  tradition  that  springs  from  them.  The  hero 
does  not  ask  how  man  can  die  better  than  by  facing  fear- 
ful odds;  he  faces  them,  and  dies.  Even  the  harmless 
and  general  contemplatio  mortis  is  absent. 

"  For  though  the  day  be  never  so  longe. 
At  last  the  belles  ringeth  to  evensonge," 

quaint  and  pretty  sentiment,  is  no  affair  of  the  balladist, 
but  the  comment  of  Master  Stephen  Hawes.  For  "obser- 
vations of  a  strong  mind  operating  upon  life,"  Johnson's 
reported  phrase,  one  must  go  to  Johnsonian  verse.  Reli- 
gion itself  is  only  an  incidental  matter,  and  makes  no  real 
figure  in  balladry. 

It  is  time  to  sum  up  the  case  for  ballads  as  a  definite 
if  closed  account  of  our  literature.  The  overwhelminsr 
majority  of  them,  committed  to  oral  tradition,  have  been 
lost;  such  as  have  been  rescued,  however,  are  probably 
representative  in  kind  as  well  as  in  proportion.  They 
tell  us  something  of  remote  origins  at  the  dance,  of  choral 
and  dramatic  beginnings  which  have  survived,  now  merely 
in  the  mould  and  structural  framework  of  traditional 
epic  ballads,  now  in  the  actual  version  which  still  clings 
to  situation,  to  repetition  in  dialogue,  and  to  refrain,  as 


338  THE   WORTH   OF  THE   BALLADS 

its  chief  elements.  With  the  remote  beat  of  foot  in  the 
ballad  is  heard  louder  and  nearer  the  voice  of  those  who 
sing  it.  It  is  lyric  in  this  singable  quality,  or  has  been  so 
once.  Tradition  by  word  of  mouth,  mainly  in  isolated 
unlettered  communities,  is  its  vital  test;  and  narrative  is 
its  vital  fact.  Its  supreme  art  is  to  tell  its  story  well;  and 
7  its  narrative  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  a  mere  stalking- 
ground  for  more  serious  intentions.  Entertainment  is  an 
obvious  purpose;  and  Sidney's  fine  words  about  the  poet 
may  be  as  well  applied  to  the  humbler  muse  of  English 
and  Scottish  ballads.  She  also  "cometh  to  you  with 
words  set  in  delightful  proportion,  either  accompanied 
with  or  prepared  for  the  well-enchanting  skill  of  music; 
and  with  a  tale,  forsooth,  she  cometh  unto  you,  with  a 
tale  which  holdeth  children  from  play  and  old  men  from 
the  chimney-corner." 

What  is  this  tale,  when  all  is  said  ?  How  is  it  varied  ? 
And  what  mood  really  prevails  ?  Rarely  is  it  the  thing 
which  ought  not  to  be  heard ;  the  ballad  muse  is  cleanly. 
Perhaps  five  and  twenty  ballads  come  under  the  light  or 
comic  class,  and  only  a  few  of  these  are  distinctly  coarse. 
"The  Keach  in  the  Creel"  of  the  new,  "Crow  and  Pie" 
of  the  old,  are  sooty  things;  to  "The  Jolly  Beggar," 
readers,  like  certain  editors,  will  give  a  buffet  nicely 
weighted  with  equal  parts  of  liking  and  reproof.  At  its 
best,  this  pure  entertainment,  this  delight  of  tales  well 
told,  meets  us  in  the  Robin  Hood  ballads,  as  in  that 
unrivaled  story  of  the  monk's  discomfiture  in  the  "  Gest," 
and  more  seriously  in  the  thrill  and  deeper  interest  of 


THE  ESSENCE   OF  BALLADRY  339 

"Child  Waters."    But  here  we  begin,  as  with  a  certain 
stage  in  all  poetry,  to  work  below  the  surface  and  to  find 
deeper  meanings  whether  consciously  or  unconsciously 
expressed.    "Child  Waters"  is  on  the  tragic  marches;   it 
hovers  at  the  brink  of  that  sea  of  troubles  which  a  major- 
ity of  the  best  ballads  are  quite  willing  to  face  without  the 
"happy  ending"   interposed.      This   statement   can    be 
based  on  statistics.    By  a  rough  but  apt  division,  out  of 
the  three  hundred-odd  ballads  we  may  call   twenty  Jby 
this  title  of  "  the  happy  ending;"    with  them  tragedy  is 
averted,  but  often,  as  in  "The  Fair  Maid  of  Northumber- 
land," escape  from  death  is  no  boon.    Often,  again,  the 
happy  ending  is  unavailing  to  remove  a  tragic  impression 
which  is  upon  us  almost  to  the  final  stanza;    it  is  like 
"Measure  for  Measure,"  put  only  by  courtesy  on  the 
"comic"  file.    The  "entertaining"  narrative,  of  course, 
lies  between  the  light  things  already  noted,  and  these 
semi-tragic  pieces  which  lead  up  to  tragedy  pure.    There 
are  about  seventy-five  of  the  chronicle  or  epic  type,  which 
includes  at  once  the  sterling  Robin  Hood  and  other  outlaw 
ballads,  and  also  a  long  list  of  the  poor,  the  doubtful, 
and  the  abject;  and  there  are  seventy  ballads  which  may 
be  credited,  with  large  use  of  the  word,  to  romance, 
ranging  for  scene  from  a  throne  to  a  kitchen,  and  for 
heroes  from  King  Arthur  to  Tom  Potts.    Beyond  those 
happy-ending  tales,  finally,  which  just  avert  tragedy  at 
their  close,  is  the  fiery  gate;    and  through  this  one  goes 
to  what  is  really  the  citadel.   A  round  hundred  of  ballads, 
the  longest  list,  are  purely  and  simply  tragic;  and  to  these 


340  THE   WORTH  OF  THE   BALLADS 

must  be  added  "Otterburn"  and  "Cheviot"  from  the 
chronicles.  And  what  a  Hst  it  is !  There  is  less  chaff  here 
for  the  wheat  than  in  the  other  catalogues;  the  best,  the 
most  characteristic,  the  oldest,  the  most  haunting  and 
persuasive  ballads  are  here.  Count  all  the  ballads,  and 
tragedy  is  well  to  the  fore;  weigh  them,  and  the  odds  are 
still  greater  on  its  side.  The  combination  of  tragedy  and 
antiquity  in  the  two-line  refrain  ballads  is  of  great  signi- 
ficance. They  and  the  other  tragic  pieces  suggest  not 
Wordsworth's  definition  of  poetry  at  large  as  "emotion 
recollected  in  tranquillity,"  but  rather  Emerson's  account 
of  it  as  the  litanies  of  nations,  coming,  — 

w"Like  the  volcano's  tongue  of  flame, 
'i     Up  from  the  burning  core  below. 
The  canticles  of  love  and  woe." 

They  echo  without  comment  the  clash  of  man  and  fate. 
If  any  lesson  is  to  be  learned  from  them,  it  is  by  implica- 
tion: the  old  lesson  that  while  destiny  is  inevitable,  in- 
exorable, the  victim  is  there  neither  to  whimper  nor 
to  mock  over  his  plight,  but  simply  to  play  the  man. 
Tragedy,  but  not  pessimism,  is  their  last  word.  Their 
deepest  value  is  that  they  revive  to  some  extent  the  im- 
pression which  primitive  and  communal  poetry  could 
make  by  means  now  impossible  for  any  poet  to  command. 
They  are  not  primitive  verse,  —  far  from  it;  they  are 
crossed  and  interwoven  with  the  poetry  of  art,  only  by 
such  support  surviving  to  our  day;  but  they  bring  with 
them  something  of  the  old  choral  appeal,  and  still  speak, 
however  faintly,  with  the  voice  of  tradition.    That  is  their 


THE  HIGHER   MOOD  341 

value;  and  it  is  not  merely  the  value  of  a  survival.  In  the 
old  Quaker  phrase,  they  speak  to  the  condition  of  modern 
men  and  women,  and  can  be  counted  as  a  permanent 
possession  of  the  race.  Surely  there  is  some  common 
poetic  ground  for  the  primitive  survival  in  "Babylon" 
and  the  modern  achievement  in  "Hamlet,"  different 
as  these  are,  and  inferior  as  one  is  to  the  other  by  our 
own  standards  of  taste.  The  ballad  at  its  best,  and  the 
great  poems  of  the  world,  are  akin  in  many  ways  and 
walk  one  path.  We  must  judge  both  of  them  by  their 
relation  to  poetry  in  its  whole  course  as  a  social  art,  as  ex- 
pression, not  of  yesterday,  not  of  to-day,  not  of  the  young 
man  in  a  library,  and  not  of  the  festal  throng,  but  of  the 
rhythmic  and  emotional  elements  common  to  individual 
and  mass.  In  rhythmic  instinct  the  "Babylons"  and  the 
"Hamlets"  are  alike,  and  the  degree  of  excellence  is  of 
slight  account,  just  as  the  noblest  piece  of  music  has  room 
for  chorus  as  well  as  solo.  For  the  emotional  and  sym- 
pathetic part,  the  actual  stuff  of  poetry  as  distinguished 
from  its  pattern,  the  union  of  ballad  and  artistic  poem 
lies  in  shadow.  But  it  can  be  seen.  In  each  case,  life 
deepest  and  strongest  is  reported  at  first  hand  and  with 
that  high  seriousness  of  which  Matthew  Arnold  had  so 
much  to  say.  The  main  work  of  civilization  for  the 
onlooker  in  life  has  been  to  detach  the  notes  of  agony, 
misery,  grief,  weariness,  from  the  notes  of  fighting,  of 
victory  and  defiance  and  defeat,  and  to  make  literature 
the  reflection  upon  life  instead  of  life  itself.  Barred  from 
this  reflective  note,  the  old  poetry  was  devoid  of  humor. 


342  THE  WORTH  OF  THE   BALLADS 

The  humorist  is  left  behind;  for  comedy,  after  all,  must  be 
the  affair  of  prose.  The  last  word  of  the  great  poem,  like 
that  last  word  of  the  ballads,  expresses  life  in  its  tragedy; 
and  only  the  tragic  can  be  finally  true. 

The  cause  of  our  liking  for  tragedy,  or  rather  of  our 
need  of  it,  has  often  been  discussed;  but  there  is  a  very 
simple  explanation  of  this  need  as  a  craving  for  truth. 
Day  in,  day  out,  it  is  pleasanter  to  keep  the  screen  of 
comedy  before  us,  and  to  take  the  curtain  for  the  play; 
but  to  every  man  come  times  when  he  desires  to  see  the 
thing  as  it  is,  and  what  he  then  sees  is  tragedy.  Comedy 
at  its  best  is  the  conventional  "poetic  justice,"  say  of 
"Hind  Horn"  in  balladry  and  of  "As  You  Like  It"  in 
art,  all  things  working  together  for  those  delightful  but 
preposterous  pairs.  No  one  wishes  to  cut  the  part  of  our 
comedian  or  to  dismiss  the  very  clown;  but  it  must  be 
borne  in  mind  that  comedy  began  in  Greece  under  the 
patronage  of  Bacchus  as  a  roaring  farcical  song,  a 
phallic  revel,  and  that  every  "happy  ending"  is  at  heart 
a  kind  of  drunkard's  paradise  in  dream.  Our  very  Eng- 
lish word  "dream"  has  curious  origins,  synonymous  once 
with  beer.  Humor  is  potent  enough,  and  Pantagruel's 
mood  is  enviable,  certaine  gaiete  d'esprit,  its  master 
defines  it,  confide  en  mespris  des  choses  fortuites  ;^  but 
it  does  not  have  that  last  word  which  belongs  to  tragedy 
and  echoes  in  all  great  verse,  echoes  even  in  these  humble 

*  Or  one  may  take  to  heart  the  motto  of  the  Paris  Figaro,  quoted  of 
course  from  Beaumarchais:  "Je  me  hate  de  rire  de  tout  .  .  .  de  peur 
d'etre  oblige  d'en  pleurer." 


FINAL   ESTIMATE  343 

traditional  songs.  Cynicism,  the  recoil  of  humor  upon 
sentiment,  ballads  never  know.  Everybody  can  quote 
Omar's  great  "forgiveness"  stanza;  but  Heine's  climax 
is  not  so  well  known.  We  keep  asking,  he  says,  why  the 
just  suffer,  why  the  evil  thrive,  keep  asking,  asking, 
"until  at  last  a  handful  of  earth  stops  our  mouths:  but 
is  that  an  answer?"  This  cannot  be  the  last  word,  for  it 
is  mere  resignation  and  protest  against  the  odds.  Tragedy 
plays  the  game,  without  complaint,  and  with  no  thought 
beyond  the  limits  of  the  scene.  Primitive  ballads,  how- 
ever inadequate  they  would  seem  for  our  needs,  came 
from  men  who  knew  life  at  its  hardest,  faced  it,  accepted 
it,  well  aware  that  a  losing  fight  is  at  the  end  of  every 
march.  A  modern  writer  has  pointed  out  that  Germanic 
popular  poetry,  along  with  Celtic  and  Slavic,  has  always 
loved  the  beaten  cause  and  echoed  the  tragedy  of  life. 
Who,  moreover,  does  not  recall  that  large  simplicity  in 
which  doom  is  announced,  as  if  to  a  Greek  tragic  chorus, 
at  the  close  of  the  Nibelungen  Lay  ?  Who  does  not  feel 
the  same  spirit,  playing  in  smaller  bounds,  at  the  close  of 
"Sir  Patrick  Spens".? 

Primitive  men  transcribed  their  tragic  experience  by  a 
process  which  psychology  may  call  either  gymnastic 
preparation  or  aesthetic  impulse,  which  Aristotle  called 
imitated  action,  and  which,  like  most  human  perform- 
ances, really  sprang  from  no  conscious  purpose  but  from 
the  interplay  of  social  instincts  and  the  conditions  of 
earliest  social  life.  Through  all  the  changes  due  to  long 
tradition,  through  changes  of  stuff,  form,  appeal,  this 


844  THE  WORTH  OF  THE   BALLADS 

primitive  way  of  life  still  speaks,  though  with  very  faint 
and  far-away  tones,  in  the  ballads.  One  must  make  no 
preposterous  claim  for  such  survivals  as  we  find  in  them. 
The  majority  of  them  must  be  classed  as  inferior  poems. 
The  best,  even,  cannot  compete  with  great  poems  of  art; 
but  there  is  a  greatness  of  their  own  in  their  attitude 
towards  life,  in  their  summary  and  transcript  of  it.  They 
know,  as  the  lords  of  tragedy  in  Hellas  knew,  as  Shake- 
speare knew,  that  only  the  anguish  of  some  inevitable 
conflict  is  worth  while.  They  know  by  instinct,  as  lyric 
poets  have  known  in  their  "recollected  emotion,"  that 
while  tragedy  is  insoluble,  it  holds  the  solution  of  ex- 
istence in  its  own  mystery,  and  that  only  from  death 
springs  the  meaning  of  life.  Without  the  unfixed  but 
certain  parting  for  eternity  there  could  be  no  human  love. 
The  ballad  does  not  say  these  things;  far  from  that.  Its 
makers  and  transmitters  would  balk  at  the  name  of 
tragedy,  and  would  be  helpless  to  understand  the  greatest 
definition  that  tragedy  has  yet  found,  the  close  of  Milton's 
"Samson  Agonistes."  But  they  give  the  spirit  of  that 
close  in  their  simple  verses,  which  tell  of  traffic  with 
danger  and  defeat.  They  report  the  battle  of  life  as 
soldiers,  not  as  the  captain,  with  eyes  and  ears  for  the 
fighting  alone,  and  no  thought  of  plan  and  campaign 
and  allies  and  the  unseen  leader  of  the  foe.  That,  after 
all,  is  the  main  difference.  It  is  no  individual  that  speaks 
out  his  thoughts,  his  hopes,  his  fears,  in  the  ballads.  If 
their  very  name  tells  of  external  origin  at  the  communal 
dance,  Herder's  title  for  them  as  Voices  of  the  Nations, 


FINAL  ESTIMATE  345 

of  the  People,  goes  to  their  essence  and  their  heart;  his 
beautiful  dedication  remains  the  best  commentary  ever 
made  upon  popular  song.  The  people  are  now  fairly 
passive  in  the  poetic  function;  their  deputy,  the  poet, 
acts  as  lord  of  verse  to  the  extent  of  forgetting  the  suf- 
frages that  made  him  what  he  is.  But  ethnology,  history, 
and  the  long  career  of  poetry  itself,  testify  beyond  reason- 
able doubt  to  a  time  when  individuals  counted  for  very 
little  in  rhythmic  expression,  and  when  the  choral  element 
was  over  all.  A  faint  echo  of  this  imperious  choral  can 
still  be  heard  in  the  ballads,  a  murmur  of  voices  in  con- 
cert, borne  over  great  stretches  of  space  and  through 
many  changes  of  time. 


w 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTES 

Most  of  the  literature  dealing  with  the  "ballad  question"  is 
recorded,  up  to  the  year  1894,  in  the  present  writer's  Old  Eng- 
lish Ballads;  subsequent  editions  are  unchanged.  A  summary 
of  later  investigation  is  made  by  H.  Hecht,  "Neuere  Literatur 
zur  englisch-schottischen  Balladendichtung,"  in  Englische 
Studien,  xxxvi  (1906),  370  ff.  The  best  short  discussions  of 
the  matter  are  those  of  G.  L.  Kittredge,  Introduction  to  the 
one-volume  edition  of  Child's  English  and  Scottish  Popular 
Ballads,  1904,  and  Andrew  Lang,  new  edition  Chambers's 
Cyclopa;dia  of  English  Literature,  1902,  i,  520  ff.  Opposed 
to  the  idea  of  popular  origins  are  W.  J.  Courthope,  chapter 
on  "Decay  of  English  Minstrelsy,"  in  History  of  English 
Poetry  (1895),  i,  426  ff. ;  T.  F.  Henderson,  Scottish  Vernacu- 
lar Literature  (1898),  pp.  355  ff.,  and  new  edition  of  Scott's 
Minstrelsy  (1902),  Introduction;  G.  Gregory  Smith,  The  Tran- 
sition Period  (1900),  pp.  180  ff.  —  Professor  Child's  opinions  on 
ballads  and  the  ballad  have  been  gathered  by  W.  M.  Hart, 
Publications  Modern  Language  Association,  xxi  (1906),  755  ff. 
—  With  regard  to  Auld  Maitland  (above,  pp.  14  f.),  Mr. 
Lang  now  says,  Sir  Walter  Scott,  Literary  Lives  Series,  1906, 
pp.  33  f. :  "I  lean  to  a  theory  that  Auld  Maitland  and  the  Out- 
law Murray  are  literary  imitations  of  the  ballads,  compiled  late 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  on  some  Maitland  and  Murray  tra- 
ditions."—  For  negative  conclusions  about  the  Anglo-Saxon 
historical  "ballads,"  see  Abegg,  Zur  Entivickelung  der  his- 
torischen  Dichtung  hei  den  Angelsachsen,  Strassburg,  1894. — 
Two  papers  need  special  mention  in  their  bearing  on  the  bal- 
lad problem  of  origins.    George  Morey  Miller,  in  The  Drama- 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL   NOTES  347 

tic  Element  in  the  Popular  Ballad,  University  of  Cincinnati 
Bulletin,  No.  19,  has  very  properly  insisted  on  a  closer  study 
of  the  mimetic  and  dramatic  features;  while  Arthur  Beatty,  in 
"The  St.  George,  or  Mummers'  Plays;  a  Study  in  the  Protology 
of  the  Drama,"  Transactions  Wisconsin  Acad.,  xv  (1906), 
273  S.,  has  pointed  out  the  importance  of  ritual  elements  in 
popular  poetry,  and  has  made  noteworthy  additions  to  the 
valuable  work  of  E.  K.  Chambers  in  the  often  cited  Mediaeval 
Stage,  2  vols.,  Oxford,  1903.  —  A  very  old  and  almost  unique 
case  of  Incremental  Repetition,  the  kind  familiar  in  ballads 
and  certain  tales,  occurs  in  "The  Descent  of  Ishtar,"  as  trans- 
lated into  German  by  Jensen,  in  Schrader's  Sammlung  von 
Assyrischen  und  Bahylonischen  Texten,  vi,  i,  Assyrisch-Baby- 
lonische  Mythen  und  Epen,  Berlin,  1900,  pp.  80-91 :  seven  sets 
of  three  verses  each  describe  the  spoiling  of  Ishtar  as  she  passes 
through  the  seven  gates  into  the  underworld,  and  the  process 
is  detailed  in  reversed  order  at  her  release.  The  analogy  with 
ballad  structure  is  striking.  On  page  87  is  an  interesting  case 
of  the  repetition  of  a  message. 

For  the  ballads  themselves,  as  set  forth  in  the  second  chapter. 
Child's  great  work  remains,  of  course,  practically  unaffected: 
The  English  and  Scottish  Popular  Ballads,  ten  parts,  two  to 
a  volume,  1882-98,  the  final  part,  containing  all  the  appa- 
ratus of  investigation,  edited  by  G.  L.  Kittredge.  Work  goes 
on,  to  be  sure,  with  regard  to  special  groups  like  the  Robin 
Hood  Cycle;  Heusler's  Lied  und  Epos,  for  example,  and  the 
dissertation,  now  in  press,  of  W.  M.  Hart  on  Ballad  and  Epic. 
Gorbing,  Anglia,  xxiii  (1900),  1  if.,  "Beispiele  von  realisierten 
Mythen  in  den  englischen  und  schottischen  Balladen,"  hardly 
keeps  the  promise  of  his  title.  —  An  extremely  interesting  com- 
panion study  to  Professor  Child's  various  introductions  is  the 
account  and  summary  of  Danish  ballads  given  by  Axel  Olrik 
in  his  Danske  Folkeviser  i  Udvalg,  Copenhagen,  1899. 


348  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL   NOTES 

For  the  sources  of  the  ballads,  Ewald  FlUgel  has  done  good 
work  (Anglia,  xxi,  312  ff.)  zur  Chronologic  der  englischen 
Balladen.  Supplementing  the  list  of  Sources  of  the  Texts,  in 
the  fifth  volume  of  Child,  compactly  given  in  the  one-volume 
edition,  pp.  677  ff..  Professor  Fliigel  makes  a  chronological 
index,  from  which  one  easily  gathers  the  facts  of  the  ballad 
record.  Judas,  in  the  Trinity  Coll.  MS.,  goes  back  to  the  thir- 
teenth century;  Robin  and  Gandelyn  dates  from  about  1450, — 
and  so  do  Robin  Hood  and  the  Monk  and  St.  Stephen,  Robin 
Hood  and  the  Potter  following  about  1500.  Then  come  the 
Edinburgh  printed  fragments  of  the  Gest  and  the  edition  of 
Wynkyn  de  Worde.  Of  sixteenth-century  texts  may  be  mentioned 
the  printed  Adam  Bell  and  the  MSS.  of  Otterbum,  Cheviot, 
Captain  Car,  Sir  Andrew  Barton.  In  the  seventeenth  century 
a  few  printed  ballads  are  overshadowed  by  the  Percy  Folio  MS., 
often  described,  and  edited  by  Hales  and  Furnivall,  1867-68, 
in  3  vols,  and  supplement.  Percy  collected  liberally,  and  his 
Reliques,  1765,  in  spite  of  its  faults  in  omission  and  commission, 
deserved  its  vogue.  The  collectors  were  now  in  the  field,  and 
their  transcripts,  good  or  bad,  along  with  broadside  rescues, 
complete  the  record.  A  word  should  be  said  in  recognition  of 
the  labors  of  Mr.  Macmath,  who  helped  Professor  Child  in  the 
latest  gathering  of  material;  through  Mr.  Macmath 's  zeal 
was  recovered  what  Scott  called  "the  collection  of  an  old  lady's 
complete  set  of  ballads."   It  has  furnished  valuable  readings. 

On  the  recitation  and  chanting  of  ballads,  the  old  love  of 
repetition,  and  the  connection  of  these  two  phases  of  balladry, 
may  be  quoted  here  some  words  of  Goethe  about  his  way  of 
telling  stories  to  children.  Werther,  of  course,  cutting  bread 
and  butter  for  Lotte's  charges,  is  the  poet  himself.  "Weil 
ich  manchmal  einen  Incidentpunkt  erfinden  muss,  den  ich 
beim  zweitenmal  vergesse,  sagen  sie  [the  children]  gleich,  das 
vorigemal  war'  es  anders  gewesen,  so  dass  ich  mich  jetzt  Ube, 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTES  349 

sie  unveranderlich  m  einem  singenden  Sylhenjall  an  einem 
Schnlirchen  weg  zu  recitiren." — In  regard  to  ballad  com- 
monplaces, the  point  of  departure  for  comparison  with  older 
Germanic  formulae  is  the  admirable  collection  by  Sievers  at 
the  end  of  his  •edition  of  the  Heliand,  Halle,  1878,  pp.  391  ff, 
Fehr's  dissertation,  Die  Formelhajten  Elemente  in  den  Alien 
Ejiglischen  Balladen,  Zossen  b.  Berlin,  1900,  needs  continuation 
and  elaboration.  —  In  treating  the  characteristics  of  the  ballad, 
I  should  have  noted  the  contrast  with  medieval  literature  in 
that  total  ignorance  of  "examples"  which  all  ballads  reveal. 
"What  know  I  of  the  quene  Niobe?"  the  balladist  could  cry 
with  Troilus;  "lat  be  thine  olde  ensaumples!" —  Little,  per- 
haps too  little,  has  been  said  of  the  borrowing  of  narrative 
elements  in  individual  cases;  but  that  subject  is  endless.  Per- 
haps a  study  of  the  haphazard  statements  about  more  "liter- 
ary" sources  would  yield  good  results;  for  example,  when  The 
Man  of  Law  says,  C  T.,  B,  132  f.,  that  he  got  his  tale  years 
before  from  "a  marchant."  But  this  kind  of  investigation  needs 
no  stimulants,  and  is  in  good  hands.  ^ —  This  mention  of  Chaucer, 
finally,  may  serve  to  remind  us  that  all  appreciation  of  the 
ballads  ranges  between  Professo,''  Child's  constant  praise  for 
the  best  of  them  as  good  stories,  told  with  as  much  success 
by  folk  afoot  and  afield  as  was  att^'ned  by  his  other  favorites, 
the  pilgrim  company  on  horseback^  ind  the  sweep  of  Herder's 
eulogy  in  that  untranslatable  dedicatJon.  Behind  the  splendid 
elegiacs,  the  appeal  for  "die  Stimme-Jes  Volks  der  zerstreue- 
ten  Menschheit  "  is  sufficient  shelter  for  any  one  who  is  accused 
of  finding  qualities  in  balladry  which  balladry  never  knew. 


BALLADS    CITED   OR  QUOTED 


Adam  Bell,  186,  269  f.,  297,  299. 

Allison  Gross,  67,  219. 

Andrew  Lammie,  107,  164,  170. 

Archie  o'  Cawfield,  251. 

Auld  Maitland,  14  f. 

Auld  Matrons,  269. 

Babylon,  or.  The  '  Bonny  Banks  o' 
Fordie,  69,  111  f.,  117,  120,  146, 
150,  159,  192,  280,  285,  288,  309, 
324,  336,  341. 

Baffled  Knight,  The,  232. 

Bailiff's  Daughter  of  Islington,  The, 
159. 

Baron  of  Brackley,  The,  185  ff.,  211, 
263  f.,  325. 

Baron  o'  Leys,  The,  132,  176. 

Battle  of  Harlaw,  The,  253. 

Battle  of  Otterburn,  The,  see  Otter- 
hum. 

Battle  of  Philiphaugh,  The,  254. 

Beggar-Laddie,  The,  164. 

Bent  sae  Brown,  The,  202. 

Bessy  Bell  and  Mary  Gray,  116,  208. 

Bewick  and  Graham,  14,  116,  126, 
167  ff.,  295  f.,  299. 

Bitter  Withy,  The,  227  fif.,  313. 

Bonnie  Annie,  214,  288. 

Bonny  Baby  Livingston,  161. 

Bonny  Banks  o'  Fordie,  The,  see 
Babylon. 

Bonny  Barbara  Allan,  116,  201. 

Bonny  Bee  Horn,  66,  187,  198. 

Bonny  Birdy,  The,  179. 

Bonny  Earl  of  Murray,  The,  95  f.,  208. 

Bonny  Hind,  The,  192  f. 

Bonny  House  o'  Airlie,  The,  239. 

Bonny  James  Campbell,  46,  95,  208, 
314. 


Bonny  John  Seton,  254. 

Bonny  Lass  of  Anglesey,  100. 

Bonny  Lizie  Baillie,  124,  163. 

Bothwell  Bridge,  214,  254. 

Boy  and  the  Mantle,  The,  231. 

Braes  o'  Yarrow,  The,  191. 

Broom  of    Cowdenknows,  The,    164, 

203. 
Broomfield  Hill,  The,  232. 
Broughty  Wa's,  162. 
Brown  Adam,  182,  327  f. 
Brown  Girl,  The,  201,  302. 
Brown  Robin,  157  f. 
Brown   Robyn's   Confession,    214, 

288. 
Burd  Isabel  and  Earl  Patrick,  200. 

Captain   Car,   or,    Edom   o'    Gordon, 

184  ff.,  194,  209,  239,  243,  260,  288, 

330. 
Captain  Wedderburn's  Courtship,  141. 
Carnal  and  the  Crane,  The,  227. 
Cherry-Tree  Carol,  The,  227. 
Cheviot,  38,  56  ff.,  85,  245,  255  ff.,  299, 

325  f.,  340. 
Chevy  Chase,  11,  256  f. 
Child  of  Ell,  The,  151. 
Child  Maurice,  43,  73,  130  f.,  146, 181, 

294,  303,  309,  328. 
Child  Owlet,  179. 
fOhild  Waters,  75,  130,  133  f.,  145,  154, 

204  ff.,  305  f.,  308,  324,  329,  339. 
Christopher  White,  159. 
Clerk  Colvill,  130,  173,  198,  217,  309. 
Clerk  Saunders,  120,  189,  202. 
Clerk's  Twa  Sons  o'  Owsenford,  The, 

202  f. 
Coble  o'  Cargill,  The,  200. 
Crafty  Farmer,  The,  233. 


352 


BALLADS   CITED   OR   QUOTED 


Crow  and  Pie,  232,  338. 

Cruel  Brother,  The,  98,  121.  187  f. 

Cruel  Mother,  The,  171,  306. 

DBemon  Lover,  The,  see  James  Harris. 
Death  of  Parcy  Reed,  The,  213,  252. 
Death  of  Queen  Jane,  The,  208,  234. 
Dick  o'  the  Cow,  250,  282. 
Dives  and  Lazarus,  227. 
Dugall  Quin,  164. 
Duke  of  Athole's  Nurse,  The,  200. 
Duke  of  Gordon's  Daughter,  The,  164. 
Durham  Field,  255. 

Earl  Bothwell,  238,  255. 

Earl  Brand.  147,  151  f..  173.  297. 

Earl  Crawford,  177. 

Earl  of  Aboyne,  The,  176. 

Earl  of  Errol,  The,  180. 

Earl  of  Mar's  Daughter,  The.  219. 

Earl  of  Westmoreland,  The,  255. 

Earl  Rothes,  189. 

Edom  o'  Gordon,  see  Captain  Car. 

Edward,  121  f.,  144,  171,  173. 

Elfin  Knight.  The.  139. 

Eppie  Morrie.  161. 

ErUnton,  151. 

Fair  Annie,  145  f..  155. 

Fair  Flower  of  Northumberland.  The, 

12.  74.  154.  339. 
Fair  Janet,  173,  202, 
Fair    Margaret    and    Sweet    William, 

200  f. 
Fair  Mary  of  Wallington,  193. 
False  Lover  Won  Back,  The,  205. 
Famous  Flower  of  Serving-Men.  The. 

67,  158. 
Farmer's  Curst  Wife.  The.  233. 
Fause  Foodrage,  195. 
Fire  of  Frendraught,The,186, 239. 325. 
Flodden  Field,  12,  254. 
Friar  in  the  Well,  The,  233. 

Gardener,  The,  143. 

Gay  Goshawk,  The.  166,  298,  308. 

Geordie.  11.  186. 


Gest  of  Robyn  Hode.  A,    see   Robin 

Hood. 
Get  Up  and  Bar  the  Door,  234. 
Gil  Brenton,  146,  155  f.,  173.  206.  304. 
Glasgerion,  193,  282,  324, 
Glasgow  Peggie,  124.  164. 
Glenlogie,  124,  165. 
Great  Silkie  of  Sule  Skerry,  The,  90. 

217,  298. 
Grey  Cock,  The,  203,  331. 
Gude  Wallace,  51,  131,  254, 
Gypsy  Laddie,  The,  63,  267. 

Hardy knut,  317. 

Heir  of  Linne,  The,  232. 

Henry  Martyn,  237. 

Hind  Etin,  218. 

Hind  Horn.  118.  146.  165,  230.  294. 

307,  342. 
Hobie  Noble,  14,  251  f. 
Hugh  Spencer's  Feats  in  France.  90, 

235,  377. 
Hughie  Grame,  122,  252. 
Hunting    of    the    Cheviot,    The,    see 

Cheviot. 

Inter  Diabolus  et  Virgo.  225, 

James  Grant,  239. 

James  Harris,  or.  The  Daemon  Lover, 

119,  182,  215,  222,  235,  302. 
James  Hatley,  196. 
Jamie  Douglas,  66,  132,  145,  177. 
Jamie  Telfer  in  the  Fair  Dodhead,  252. 
Jellon  Grame,  199,  328. 
Jew's  Daughter,  The,  see  Sir  Hugh. 
Jocko'the  Side,  14,211,251,299,325. 
John  Dory,  236  f. 
John  of  Hazelgreen,  163,  319  f. 
John  Thomson  and  the  Turk,  231. 
Johnie  Armstrong,  12,  37,  73,  211  ff., 

246,  283,  308. 
Johnie  Cock,  174,  267  f.,  271 ,  298,  302, 

325. 
Johnie  Scot,  160. 
Jolly  Beggar,  The,  164,  233.  338. 
Judas.  225  f.,  288. 


BALLADS  CITED   OR  QUOTED 


353 


Katharine  Jaffray,  98,  127,  161,  314. 
Keach  in  the  Creel,  The,  233,  338. 
Kemp  Owyne,  118,  218  f.,  298. 
Kempy  Kay,  220. 

King  Arthur  and  King  Cornwall,  232. 
King   Edward   IV  and   a  Tanner   of 

Tamworth,  12,  232. 
KingEstmere,  147, 154f.,  231,299,307. 
King  Henry,  220. 
King     Henry     Fifth's     Conquest     of 

France,  236. 
King  James  and  Brown,  238. 
King  John  and  the  Bishop,  141. 
King  Orfeo.  68,  71,  92,  224  f.,  291. 
King's  Dochter  Lady  Jean,  The,  192. 
Kinmont  Willie,  27,  62,  251,  314. 
Kitchie-Boy,  The,  165. 
Knight  and  Shepherd's  Daughter,  The, 

203. 
Knight's  Ghost,  The,  160. 
Knight  of  Liddesdale,  The,  177. 

Lads  of  Wamphray,  The,  57,  249. 

Lady  Alice,  116,  201 

Lady  Diamond,  165. 

Lady  Elspat,  164. 

Lady  Isabel,  175. 

Lady  Isabel  and  the  Elf-Knight,  68, 

70,  98,  121,  147,  152  f. 
Lady  Maisry,  122,  124,  130,  189,  202. 
Lady  of  Arngosk,  The,  162  f. 
Laily  Worm,  The,  67,  175,  219. 
Laird  o'  Logic,  The,  238. 
Laird  of  Wariston,  The,  238. 
Lamkin,  103,  132,  194  f.,  303. 
Lang  Johnny  More,  160,  303. 
Lass  of  Roch  Royal,  The,  87,  174. 
Leesome  Brand,  193. 
Little  Musgrave  and  Lady  Barnard, 

128,  179,  301,  327. 
Lizie  Lindsay,  164. 
Lizie  Wan,  192. 
Lochmaben  Harper,  The,  250. 
Lord  Delamere,  119,  235. 
Lord  Derwentwater,  211  f. 
Lord   Ingram   and   Chiel   Wyet,   126, 

190  f.,  308. 


Lord  Lovel,  67,  90,  200,  305. 

Lord     Maxwell's     Last    Good-Night, 

211  f. 
Lord  of  Lorn,  The,  197. 
Lord  Randal,  117,  144,  173,  200,  324. 
Lord  Saltoun  and  Auchanachie,  170. 
Lord  Thomas  and  Fair  Annet,   125, 

173,  200,  307,  326. 
Lord  Thomas  and  Lady  Margaret,  200. 
Lord  WiUiam,  or,  Lord  Lundy,  161. 
Loudon  Hill,  254. 

Maid  and  the  Palmer,  The,  77,  226. 
Maid  Freed  from  the  Gallows,  The,  98, 

101  ff..  Ill,  117,  120,  144,  147,285, 

287,296,  313. 
Marriage  of  Sir  Gawain,  The,  232. 
Mary   Hamilton,    67,    104,    129,   213, 

239  ff.,  243,  260,  288,  325. 
Mermaid,  The,  125. 
Mother's  Malison,  The,  87,  145,  174. 
Musselburgh  Field,  255. 

Northumberland  Betrayed  by  Doug- 
las, 255. 

Nut-Brown  Maid,  The,  12  f.,  16.  203  f., 
263. 

Old  Robin  of  Portingale,  179,  303. 
Otterburn,    38,    56 ff.,   85,    241,  247, 

255  ff.,  284,  288,  301,  330,  340. 
Our  Goodman,  103,  177  f.,  233. 
Outlaw  Murray,  The,  211. 

Prince  Heathen,  90,  205,  306. 
Prince  Robert,  172. 
Proud  Lady  Margaret,  141. 

Queen  Eleanor's  Confession,  234,  248. 
Queen  of    Elfan's   Nourice,  The,    35, 

325. 
Queen  of  Scotland,  The,  179. 

Rantin  Laddie,  The,  176. 
Rare  Willie  Drowned  in  Yarrow,  192. 
Redesdale  and  Wise  WiUiam,  182. 
Richie  Story,  165. 


354 


BALLADS   CITED  OR  QUOTED 


Riddles  Wisely  Expounded,  138. 
Rising  in  the  North,  The,  66,  255. 
Rob  Roy,  163. 

Robin  Hood,  The  Birth  of,  128. 
Robin  Hood,  A  Gest  of,  4,  39,  78,  85, 

241,  270  ff.,  280,  283  f.,  332,  336. 
Robin  Hood,  A  True  Tale  of,  276. 
Robin  Hood  and  the  Beggar,  275. 
Robin  Hood  and  the  Bishop  of  Here- 
ford, 275. 
Robin   Hood   and   Guy  of  Gisborne, 

105.  114,  271,  274,  277,  280  f.,  309, 

337. 
Robin  Hood  and  the  Monk,  114,  246, 

270,  274,  277  f.,  281  f.,  325,  330. 
Robin  Hood  and  the  Potter,  274,277, 

309. 
Robin  Hood  newly  Revived,  275. 
Robin  Hood's  Death,  144,  274,  279  f., 

335. 
Robyn  and  Gandeleyn,  67,  268,  271. 
Rose  of  England,  The,  4,  236. 
Rose  the  Red  and  White  Lily,  158, 175. 

St.  Stephen  and  Herod,  226,  228,  325. 
Sheath  and  Knife,  84,  192,  331. 
Sir  Aldingar,  53  f.,  195  f.,  299,  303. 
Sir  Andrew  Barton,  90,  121,  237,  300, 

330. 
SirCawline,  231,  302. 
Sir  Hugh,  68,  127,  229  f..  279. 
Sir  James  the  Rose,  200. 
Sir  John  Butler,  175. 
Sir  Lionel,  118,' 231. 
Sir  Patrick  Spens,  69.  128  f.,  210,  301, 

324,  327,  330,  333,  343. 
Slaughter  of  the  Laird  of  Mellerstain, 

The,  209. 
SufiFolk  Miracle,  The,  222. 
Sweet  Trinity,  The,  237. 
V  Sweet  William's  Ghost,  201,  221,  235, 

302. 


Tarn  Lane  (or  Lin),  27,  62,  216,  298, 

315. 
Thomas  Rym^.  15,  215  f.,  302,  329. 
Three  Ravens,  The,  187.  197. 
Tom  Potts,  158,  165,  301.  339. 
Trooper  and  Maid,  199. 
Twa  Brothers,  The,  107,   117,  122  f., 

142,  296,  325. 
Twa  Knights,  The,  184,  300. 
Twa  Magicians,  The,  142,  300. 
Twa   Sisters,  The,    75,  189  f.,    282, 

301. 

Unquiet  Grave.  The.  201,  220. 

Walter  Lesly,  161  f. 

Wee,  Wee  Man,  The,  220. 

White  Fisher,  The,  173. 

Wife  of  Usher's  Well    The,  127,  144, 

222  f.,  248,  302,  313  f.,  324. 
Wife  Wrapt  in  Wether's  Skin,  The,  233. 
Will  Stewart  and  John.  155.  308. 
Willie  and  Earl  Richard's  Daughter, 

128,  158. 
Willie  and  Lady  Maisry,  202,  308. 
Willie  Mackintosh,  210. 
WilUe  o'  Douglas  Dale,  165,  306  f.    , 
Willie  o'  Winsbury,  160. 
Willie's  Lady,  157,  173. 
Willie's  Lyke-Wake,  166. 
Wylie  Wife  of  the  Hie  Toun  Hie,  The, 

203.  , 

Young  Allan,  211. 
Young  Andrew,  67.  153. 
Young  Beichan,  67,  212,  230. 
Young  Benjie,  199. 
Young  Hunting,  198  f.,  298  ff. 
Young  Johnstone,  200,  309. 
Young  Peggy,  164. 
Young  Ronald,  160,  316. 
Young  Waters.  208,  316. 


INDEX 


Addison,  256. 

Adultery,  177  fF. 

Agincourt,  songs  on,  261. 

Aldhelm,  245. 

Allingham,  222.  314. 

Alliteration,  56,  262,  280,  304  f.,  308, 

326. 
Anglo-Saxon  ballads,  34  f. 
Anglo-Saxon  Chronicle,  33. 
Anglo-Saxon  didactic,  136. 
Anglo-Saxon  epic,  36  ff.,  42  f. 
Anglo-Saxon  poetry,  39,  42,  59,  260. 
Anglo-Saxon  riddles,  136. 
Anglo-Saxon  verse,  34.     v 
Anichkof,  45. 
Aristocratic   personages,    82,    307    f., 

309;   as  types,  308. 
Aristotle,  14,  20,  181. 
Aroold,  M.,  72,  307. 
Arthur,  52,  272. 
Arval  Hymn,  93  f. 
Auie,  the,  203,  331. 
Aubrey,  J.,  9,  207,  299. 

Bacon,  322. 

Ballad,  the,  ambiguous  word,  3  ff., 
32;  of  art,  13,  319,  333;  as  degener- 
ate art,  62  ff.;  defined,  2,  75,  284  f., 
321,  337  f.;  earliest  English  record 
of,  58;  elements  of,  29;  and  epic, 
36f.,  266  ff.;  forgery  of,  314  ff., 
318;  imitations  of,  314  ff.,  319; 
improvements  of,  315;  as  journal- 
ism {q.v.),  4f.,  10  ff.;  making  of, 
61,  75  f.,  284,._210;  metre  of,  (^. 
60,  261,  263,(325  £);  the  passing  of, 
313;  in  print,  '4ff.;  problem  of, 
14  ff.,  26  f.,  28,  61  ff.;   structure  of , 

.    42,  58,  60,  71  ff.,  79,  85  ff.,  126, 131; 


style  of,  centripetal,  325  f.;  sum- 
mary of,  337  ff.;  transmitted  by 
women,  9,  49;  vocabulary  of,  limited, 
326. 

Ballads,  the,  age  of,  30  f.;  of  battle, 
253  ff.;  of  the  border,  56  f.,  243  ff.; 
characters  in,  81, 114,241, 272,309f., 
336  f.;  coincidence  or  derivation 
in,  295;  community  of  narrative  in, 
68  ff.,  288  ff.;  dialogue  in,  83  f.;  of 
domestic  complication,  145  ff.;  of 
elopement,  155  ff.,  161  ff.;  folklore 
in,  299  ff.;  fusion  of,  310;  of  the 
greenwood,  266  ff.,  293;  Germanic, 
36;  grouping  of,  135,  337  f.;  in 
histories,  49  ff.;  inclusions  and 
exclusions  of,  15  f.;  of  jealousy, 
177  ffr;  of  kinship,  169  ff.;  lack  of 
comment  and  reflection  in,  337, 
341  f.;  lack  of  cynicism  in,  343;  lack 
of  humor  in,  341;  lack  of  religion  in, 
337;  lack  of  sentiment  in,  170,  320, 
343;  nature  in,  277,  328  ff.;  oldest, 
the,  135  ff.;  used  for  plays,  103, 
105  f.;  political,  32;  solirces  of,  29  f., 
286  ff.,  310;  statistics  of,  338  ff.; 
of  the  street,  4,  13;  tests  of,  15  f.; 
texts  of  the,  80,  267;  worth  of, 
322  ff. 

Bannockburn,  songs  on,  55  f. 

Barbour,  J.,  31,  49. 

Basques,  the,  23. 

Beatty,  A.,  45,  94. 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  180,  201. 

B^dier,  J.,  140,'290. 

Beowulf,  39  ff.,  46,  184,  273,  303  f., 
329. 

Birds,  agency  of,  153,  166,  199,  294, 
298,  302. 


356 


INDEX 


Births  in  the  forest,  193. 

Blake,  W.,  72. 

Blind  Harry,  51. 

Blond  as  the  ballad  type  of  beauty, 

307. 
Bluebeard,  154. 

Border,  ballads  of  the,  56  f.,  243  ff. 
Borrow,  G.,  23. 

Borrowing  from  ballad  to  ballad,  289ff. 
Botocudos,  the,  135. 
Boynton  on  refrain,  278. 
Brandl,  A.,  267. 
Broadsides  (see  Journalism),  159,  215, 

222,  238,  257,  276. 
Brother,    the,    183  f.,    188    S. ;    and 

brother,  190;  and  sister  189,  192  f.. 

202. 
Brown,  Mrs.,  of  Falkland,  216  f.,  313. 
Brunanburh,  song  on,  34,  50. 
Brunne,  Robert,  7. 
Buchan,  P.,  15,  301,  316. 
Bugge,  S.,  70,  153. 
Burden,  see  Refrain. 
Burlesque,  124  f. 
Burns,  62,  73,  201,  314  f. 

Cante-fable,  the,  107. 

Carols,  227. 

Celtic  songs,  311. 

Chambers,  E.  K.,  45,  83,  106,  149. 

Chanting,  247. 

Characters,  see  Ballads. 

Charms,  301. 

Chaucer,  32,  47,  204,  229  f.,  244,  259, 
305. 

Chettle,  H.,  5. 

Child,  F.  J.,  his  collection,  14  f.,  29, 
135;    his  definition  of  ballads,    15 
on  derivation  and  distribution,  124 
on    inclusion    and    exclusion,    160 
his  introductions,   292  f.,   297;     his 
obiter    dicta,    325;     on    rhythm    of 
ballads,  263;     on  statistics  as  sus- 
picions,  81;     his  views  and   sum- 
maries of  the  various  ballads,  51, 
129,  152,  204,  232,  239,  272,   280. 
etc. 


Childe  Harold,  211,  280. 

Chivalry,  259. 

Choice  of  color,  or  sequence  of  colors, 

88,  121,  129,  188,  240,  306,  308. 
Choice  of  ring  or  brand,  300. 
Choice  of  three,  129  f.,  236,  306. 
Choral  verse,  19,  36,  44  £F.,  52,  59  f., 

76  f.,  80,  83,  91, 100, 108, 147  f..  164, 

287,  311,  340. 
Chrestien  de  Troyes,  204. 
Christ  and  His  Mother,  116. 
Chronicle  ballads,  243  ff.,  265,  339. 
Cnut's  song,  58  f.,  249. 
Comfort,  W.  W.,  208. 
Comitatus,  299. 
Commonplaces,    127  ff.,     142,    158  f., 

264  f.,  279,  282,  298,  304  ff. 
Communal   poetry,    19,    43,    54,    75, 

331  f.,  345. 
Complaynt  of  Scotland,  The,   47,    246, 

253. 
Convention  in  ballads,  305  £F.,  324  f., 

332. 
Coronachs,  207  f. 
Corsican  hallati,  95. 
Cosquin,  E.,  290. 
Covenanters,  the,  253  f. 
Cox,  Captain,  12. 
Cries,  three,  121. 
Croyland,  chronicle  of,  49. 
Cumulative  songs,  103,  139. 

Dance,  ballads  of  the,  97  f.,  245  f.;  at 
funerals,  95,  207,  246;  as  source  of 
ballads,  10,  14,  24,  44,  47,  59,  72,  91. 
98  f.,  100,  106  ff.,  117,  137  f.,  140  f.. 
147  f.,  311. 

Daughter,  the,  175. 

Davidson,  Dr.  T.,  143. 

Death  not  emphasized,  283,  309, 
337. 

Deloney,  T.,  12  f..  254. 

Dialogue,  83  f.,  101. 

Didactic,  136. 

Douglas,  Gawin,  47. 

Dramatic  elements,  92,  97,  100,  119, 
123,  164,  166,  178. 


!\ 


INDEX 


357 


Dream-opening,  67. 

Dreams,  301. 

Dress,  color  of,  129,  132,  308  f. 

Eoiae,  79. 

Epic,  36  £.,  42  f.,  69,  78  f.,  83,  92,  135, 

270,  284. 
Epic  methods,  335  f. 
Epic  preface,  92  f. 
Epic  process,  79  ff.,  109  f.,  118  f.,  141, 

147,  150,  243,  260,  266,  270,  291. 
Ethnological  evidence,  21  £f. 

Fabyan's  chronicle,  55. 
Fairy  ballads,  215  ff. 
Faroe  Islands,  ballads  in  the,  24,  26, 
69,  105,  107,  109,  146  f.,  150,  263. 
Father,  the,  173. 
Figurative  language,  72,  327  f. 
Flytings,  55,  137  f.,  143. 
Folklore  in  ballads,  299  flf. 
Folk  song,  66. 
Fontenelle,  1. 
Forgery,  see  Ballad. 
Frankish  ballad,  48  f. 
Frazer,  J.  G.,  45,  94. 
Fulk  Fitz-Warine,  8. 
Funeral  songs,  46,  95. 
Furnivall,  F.  J.,  207. 

Games,  80,  108  f. 

German  ballad  in  England,  294. 

Germanic  ballads,  36,  293,  343. 

Gerould,  G.  H.,  228. 

Ghosts,  200.  220  ff.,  301  f. 

Goldsmith,  322. 

Good-nights,  211  ff.,  252. 

Goths,  44,  46. 

Gray,  73,  181. 

Greek  ballads,  modern,  172. 

Greenwood  ballads,  266  ff. 

Grundtvig,  15,  60,  100,  204,  293. 

Chienillon,  150. 

Hales,  J.  W.,  258. 
Halewijn,  124,  154. 
Happy  ending,  339. 


Hardy,  T.,  9,  248. 

Harpens  Kraft,  70. 

Hart,  W.  M.,  267,  325. 

Hebrew  ballads,  48. 

Heine,  171,  179,  198. 

Helgi,  Lay  of,  221. 

Henderson,  T.  F.,  16,  192,  317. 

Henley,  W.  E.,  63. 

Henry  of  Huntingdon,  50. 

Herd,  D.,  313. 

Herder,  17  f.,  344  f . 

Hereward,  ballads  of,  30,  49  f.,  274. 

Herford,  C.  H.,  293. 

Hero' and  Leander,  86  ff.,  92,  223  f. 

Heusler,  A.,  263. 

Highland  dialect,  254. 

Hilde  saga,  151. 

Hildebrand  and  Hilde,  151. 

History  perverted,  234. 

Holstein  dances,  97  f.,  139  f.,  147  f. 

Humor,  177  f.,  233  f.,  281  f.,  341  f. 

Husband  and  wife,  176  ff. 

"I,"  the,  of  ballads,  66  f. 

Icelandic  saga,  113. 

Imitations,  314. 

Impersonal  quality,  66,  287. 

Impossible  things,  139  f.,  142,  291. 

Imprecation,  144  f. 

Improvisation,  14,  22,  24  f.,  48,  58  ff., 

73fif.,    101,    249  f.,    260,    287;     by 

warriors,  37,  40  f.,  57. 
Incest,  192. 

Incremental,  see  Repetition. 
Indecent  ballads,  65,  203,  232  f.,  338  f. 
Informers,  197. 

Jacobs,  J.,  107. 

Jealousy,  ballads  of,  177,  189  f. 
Jeanroy,  140. 
John  of  Bridlington,  52. 
John  of  Ireland,  323. 
Johnson,  Dr.,  73,  283,  286,  337. 
Jordanis,  46. 

Journalism,  4,  10.  13,  32  f.,  40,  52  f., 
56,  238;    degenerate,  159,  235,  261. 
Judith  and  Holofernes,  153,  335. 


358 


INDEX 


Ker,  W.  P.,  36,  69,  266  f.,  336. 

Kinship,  166  £F. 
KipUng,  R.,  14,  333  f. 
Kittredge,  G.  L.,  8  f.,  39,  75,  101,  232, 
266,  267,  287. 

Labor,  chorals  of,  45. 

Lang,  A.,  14  f.,  57,  239,  242, 248, 289  f., 

315. 
Lang,  H.  R.,  141. 
Layamon,  51  f. 

Leaping  and  lingering,  91,   117,  283. 
Legacy  formula,  121,  144,  172.  188  f., 

213. 
Legend,  sacred,  225  S. 
Lenore,  222. 
Leslie,  Bishop,  57. 
Liden  Kirstins  Dana,  100  f. 
Light,  supernatural,  302  f. 
Limburger  Chronicle,  32  f . 
Lowth,  48. 
Lyric,  34  f.,  47,  116.  331. 

Macmath,  313. 

Magic  {see  also  Charms),  142, 153, 156, 

204,  303. 
Maid  Marian,  271. 
Maldon  Fight,  34,  260,  263. 
Marie  de  France,  146. 
Meier,  John,  27,  62  f. 
Meredith,  G.,  14;   his  Attila  compared 

with  ballads,  333  f. 
Mermaids,  210,  217,  301. 
Metre,  see  Ballad. 
Metrical  tales,  232. 
Minot,  Laurence,  55  f.,  259. 
Minstrel,  the,  4,  6,  8,  37,  40,  50  f.,  66; 

and  ballads,  8  flf.,  32,  54,  137,  231, 

255,  259,  263. 
Minstrel  ballads,  231  G.,  254. 
Montaigne,  2. 
Mother,  the,   171  f.;    more  important 

than  father,  173. 
Mother-in-law,  172  ff. 
MuUenhoff,  21,  149,297. 
Murray,  Dr.,  15. 
Myth,  94  f.,  293,  298,  302,  328. 


Naming,  152. 

Narrative,  68,  82,  89  f.,  115,  338. 
Nashe,  T.,  3  f. 
Nature  in  ballads,  328  ff. 
Nature-opening,  277  f. 
Neilson,  W.  A.,  254. 
Neocorus,  97,  107. 
Nilus  og  Hillelille,  183  f. 
Nithart,  99. 

Nut-Brown  Maid,  The,  13,  15,  203  f., 
263. 

Oaths,  199,  299. 

Old  Lady's  MS.,  164,  219,  233. 

Ordeal,  199,  299. 

Ossian,  311. 

Outlaw,  the,  267  f.,  272  f. 

Pages,  306. 

Paris,  G.,  36,  81,  182,  289. 

Peacock.  T.  L.,  257. 

Percy,    Bishop,    30,    313;     his   folio, 

315.  4 

Permission,  asking,  87,  98,  188. 
Piers  Plowman,  30  f.,  53,  272  f. 
Poetry,  18  ff. 
Ponts-neufs,  4. 

"Popular,"  3,  14  ff.,  320  f.,  322. 
Popular  tale,  69,  109,  141. 
Popular  verse,  25,  31. 
Portents,  301. 
Prayer,  final,  244,  280. 
Primitive  verse,  21. 
Priority  of  epic,  lyric,  drama,  21. 

Radloff,  22,  137. 

Randolph,  Earl,  7.  30.  50,  273  f. 

Rauf  Coilyear,  232. 

Recitation,  244,  270,  332. 

Refrain,  34,  36,  44,  48,  54,  56,  74  f.,  76, 

84,91,100,  111,  133 f.,  148, 156,  268, 

278,  320,  330. 
Relative-climax,  98,  102  f.,  104,  120, 

123  f.,  165,  189,  194,  296. 
Renaud,  130. 
Repetition,  42, 86, 88, 93  f.,  116, 133  f., 

166,  282,  323. 


INDEX 


359 


Repetition,  incremental,  90  ff.,  95,  98, 
100, 104, 113, 116  ff.,  123, 127, 133  f., 
155  f.,  178,  205,  223  ff.,  249  f.,  253, 
268  f.,  280,  282,  300,  329;  three 
forms  of,  120  ff.;  burlesque  of,  124  f.; 
statistics  of,  134. 

Rhapsode,  270.    See  Minstrel, 

Rhythm,  80,  247,  323  f.,  341. 

Ribold  og  Guldborg,  151. 

Riddle,  96,  135  ff.,  291. 

Rime,  73,  326. 

Ritson,  J.,  314.  ^ 

Ritual,  songs  of,  43,  45,  93  f.,  27l.\ 

Robin  Hood,  IJJf.,  272,  275  f.,  336; 
plays  of,  105  f.,  271;  ballads  of,  5, 
12,  30,  56,  81,  115.  245,  266  ff.,  274, 
299,  338. 

Roland,  10,  37. 

Romances,  ballads  from,  197,  216,  230. 

Romantic  ballads,  145  f.,  151,  155, 
165  f.,  230  f.,  319  f.,  330,  339. 

Rondeau,  140. 

Rousseau,  3. 

Russian  ballads,  172. 

Saga,  Icelandic,  33,  69. 
St.  George  Plays,  94,  123. 
Salomon  and  Saturn,  136,  303. 
Satire,  52  f. 

Scandinavian  ballads,  146,  151. 
Schofield,  W.  H.,  255. 
Schrader,  Prof.,  172. 
-^'.fecott,  27,  62, 163,  247,  251,  313  ff.,  319. 
Jf  Scott's  Minstrelsy,  319  ;    new  ed.,  16. 
*    Sea-ballads,  214,  237. 
Selden,  7,  11. 
Sentiment,  170  f.,  320. 
Servant,  the,  193  ff. 
Shakespeare,  3,  10,  259. 
Sharpe,  C.  K.,  162. 
Sheale,  R.,  38,  262  f. 
Siberia,  ballads  in,  22  f.,  137  f. 
Sidgw'ick,  F..  228. 
Sievers,  R.,  12  f. 
Simplicity,  72  f. 
Simrock,  295. 
Sing  and  say,  245. 


Singing,  71,  74,  159,  276. 

Sir  Henry  (Scand.),  148  f.,  154. 

Sir  Hugh  le  Blond,  196. 

Sister,  the,  182  f.,  189  f. 

Sister's  son,  121,  125,  183  f.,  200. 

Situation-ballads,   82,  85  ff.,   92,    110, 

113  f..  195,  271,  278  f..  336. 
Skelton,  4. 
Sociology,  21. 
Sources,  problem  of,  288  ff . 
Split  situation,  90. 
Springeltanz,  97  f. 
Stanza,  interlaced,  250,  261,  282. 
Statistics  in  ballads,  81,  264. 
Stepmother,  the,  175. 
Stev,  26. 

Stewart,  J.  A.,  302. 
Stolen  bride,  the,  145  ff.;  variants  of, 

147,  161  ff. 
Stornelli,  26. 
Structure,  see  Ballads. 
Supernaturalelements,  141,147, 152  ff., 

182,  214  ff..  298  f. 
Survivals  of  early  verse,  22. 
Sword-dance,  149. 
Swords.  303  f..  307. 
Sworn  brethren,  167,  269,  299. 

Tmrningspillet,  118. 

Taine,  323,  333. 

Tennyson,  124,  247;  The  Revenge, 
333;   Morte  d' Arthur,  335. 

Text,  80,  267,  312. 

Thomas  of  Erceldoune,  52. 

Tradition,  30  f..  38.  40,  60  ff.,  286  f., 
293,  310  ff.;  opposed  to  journalism, 
33;    corruption  in.  63. 

Tragedy.  166  ff.,  181,  188,  192.  202. 
217.  283,  295,  339  ff.;  why  the  fa- 
vorite, 342. 

Tragemund.  137. 

Transformation,  143,  216  f.,  218  ff., 
298. 

True-loves.  197  ff. 

Tupper,  F.,  Jr.,  136. 

Uhland,  137,  140,  222. 


360 


INDEX 


Ulinger,  121. 
Usener,  H.,  60. 

Valdemar  og  Tove,  157. 
Versus  memoriales,  136. 
Vocero,  95,  208  f. 

Wallace,  51. 
Walthariiis,  183. 
Walton,  Isaak,  1. 
Waly,  Waly,  132,  177. 
War,  chorals  of,  44  f.,  55. 
Warriors,  songs  of,  37,  40  f.,  57,  81, 
259  f. 


Warton,  54. 

Weddings,  ballads  of,  45,  140. 

Whimzies,  5. 

Widsith,  40,  52,  136. 

Wiener,  L.,  294. 

Wife,  the,  171,  182,  184  ff.,  187. 

Wife's  Complaint,  The,  34  f. 

William  of  Malmesbury,  50  f.,  53,  195, 

245. 
Woden,  152. 
Women   and  ballads,   5,  8f,,  48,  55, 

207. 
Wordsworth,  247. 
Wright,  T.,  62,  261. 


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